


butterfly effect (the normalcy is subjective remix)

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Male Character, F/M, Gay Male Character, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24912898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: The guy in the cell next to Flex's doesn't want his help, even if his sparkly little buddy does. That doesn't mean Flex is going to leave either of them behind during his escape from the Ant Farm. No way. That's just not what heroes do.The Bureau of Normalcy isn't pleased about two of their assets escaping. Dr. Niles Caulder isn't pleased about his plans getting thrown off the rails. And Larry sure as hell isn't pleased about getting dragged miles through the woods by a guy with muscles the size of watermelons and a picture-perfect smile.
Relationships: Dolores Mentallo/Flex Mentallo, Flex Mentallo/Larry Trainor, Keeg Bovo & Larry Trainor
Comments: 34
Kudos: 106





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! I've been working on this fic for almost exactly a year, and I'm excited to start posting it and get it out there in the world. Thank you to Hannah and Keegan for showing so much interest in it before I'd gotten it all wrapped up. I'm not sure how often I'll update, but I'll try to keep it fairly regular until it's all uploaded.
> 
> Additionally, I'm using _ze/hir_ pronouns for Keeg in this fic. Please refer to hir with them or with _xe/xer_ if you mention hir in your comment. I assume everyone would naturally because that's what the characters use, but I want to make sure. 
> 
> [ **CW:** the first chapter of this fic contains vomiting, internalized homophobia, implications of/mentions of torture, emotional/psychological manipulation, implications of past consent issues and the belief that someone must repay someone else with sexual favors, ableism, self-hatred, someone wanting to go back to the people who hurt them, passive suicidal ideation, and somewhat unintentional misgendering.]

The guy and his buddy in the cell next to Flex’s don’t want his help. He knows that. Of course they don’t, they’ve already been tortured enough. If he was in their position he wouldn’t want help either. He’d be too afraid that it was secretly a trap. Honestly, Flex gets it. He can’t remember much of who he was before he was Flex Mentallo, but he thinks he was probably afraid like that too.

But that doesn’t mean Flex is going to leave them behind. What kind of superhero would leave someone behind to be tortured like that, knowing full well how awful it would be? What kind of _man_ would he be to leave someone behind like that? Exactly.

The guy’s buddy, Keeg or Kreeg (Flex couldn’t really hear them properly, but it seemed rude to ask them to repeat themselves) had said a bit about the situation, and Flex had been able to see a bit of it, so it’s not a surprise when they’re alone when they slide into his cell by themselves. He grins and directs them to tug out the wires, trying not to let his anxiety show. Heroes don’t have anxiety. Heroes are super strong and they always outsmart the bad guys, so this is going to work. This has to work.

It works.

The explosion rockets up and outward. Flex wasn’t too concerned with subtlety, because what was the point if they were just going to draw attention later on while trying to escape anyway? The guy in the other cell is swearing loudly about how he _doesn’t want to break out_ and how it’ll be so much worse for him if they try to escape (which doesn’t make much sense to Flex, since if they’ve _escaped_ how could these “Bureau of Normalcy” nutjobs hurt him?) even as he’s struggling out from the rubble of the wall that blasted outward—or inward, depending on your perspective—onto him.

“Hey there,” Flex says brightly, bending over to scoop him up. That suit he’s wearing looks awfully funny. He is a bit taller than Flex was expecting him to be, but it’s still easy enough to pick him up, even though he tries to punch him in the shoulder at least twelve times before he realizes that it’s not working and starts to kick him in the gut. Which also doesn’t work. Usually Flex would pretend that it did something just to make him feel better, but there’s no time for that. They’ve got to get out of here.

Without those damn wires holding his powers down, it’s easy to tear the walls of the facility down. They crack like eggshells when he so much as bats an eye. Maybe he’s _more_ powerful because they suppressed his abilities, like the pressure that builds up behind the cork of a champagne bottle. If that’s the case, he’s probably going to crash soon, and he’d like to be _very_ far away from this place when that happens. 

But the corridors are like a maze without any cheese at the end, and the sea of agents just keeps coming. Deflecting bullets from himself and his new friend is easy enough. Trying to stop those very same bullets from ricocheting off him and hitting the people that fired them is much harder. And Flex isn’t able to grab any of them to lightly question them about where the exit to this place is.

There’s a light hum when Keeg (the more he thinks about it, the more he’s sure it’s Keeg and not Kreeg) lifts up and out of their friend’s body. It’s quite the lightshow. Flex can see why these people were so interested in them. Him, maybe? Flex will have to ask. It doesn’t seem right to just assume. Once they’ve joined the fight, things go much quicker, and they seem to actually have an idea of where they’re going as they rush through the veritable horde of Bureau agents whose bullets go right through them.

There won’t be any time to free the rest of the prisoners, unfortunately. But once he’s out of here, he can talk to someone about it. Alert the police or a firefighter or the president or someone else with a lot of power to get this place shut down.

All in a day’s work for Flex Mentallo.

* * *

Larry wakes up and immediately vomits.

It’s not the first or even the fifth time this has happened, but it still sucks. At least it’s not like there was all that much in his stomach to begin with, though whether that’s a small mercy or not is up to interpretation. It’s hard to see out of the tinted lenses of that suit they stuck him in, but the walls of the room he’s in are unfamiliar. As his brain slowly focuses, he realizes they aren’t walls at all—they’re trees, _real_ trees, not painted cement or anything.

He’s outside for the first time in what feels like millennia and he can’t even feel the air on his face.

“Hey there, Larry,” a deep and cheerful voice says from beside him, and Larry groans. “Your friend Sparky told me your name. How are you feeling? Did you know we were in the Pentagon?”

Larry focuses on the first part of that sentence. _Your friend told me your name._ He didn’t tell Flex his name, the—the _thing_ inside him did. At the facility, in the Ant Farm, they only ever called him Captain Trainor or 721. Even before, the doctors called him Mr. Trainor or Captain Trainor or sometimes just ‘Trainor.’ The people who last called him Larry were Sheryl and John. The idea of the thing that ruined his fucking life _listening_ to the people he—to them telling him goodbye—

Larry almost throws up again at the thought. How can this guy, Flex, 722, feel so calm about all of this? Doesn’t he just want to tear his skin off, rip the awful parts _out_ of him and live freely without them? Didn’t he feel any sense of hope in the things that the Bureau had started to drill into his head? A desire to let them carve the degeneracy out so that he could finally be free of it once and for all?

“You don’t look so hot there, buddy,” Flex says sympathetically. “I don’t have any food, but we got pretty far from those guys before I had to stop and put you down. You can take that whole getup off, if you like. It can’t be that comfortable, and Sparky really doesn’t like it.”

“I can’t take it off,” Larry gets out. He feels like he’s drowning. He feels like there’s something trapped under his skin that can’t get out, and what makes things worse is that there actually _is._ He’s not just making things up this time. The need to pull his hair and rock to get the feelings inside of him out isn’t actually all in his head anymore. “I’m radioactive, I hurt people, I can’t—I can’t—“

“Hmm.” Flex looks him up and down. “You can’t stay in there the whole time, you’ll have to eat something at some point… I bet Danny will have someone who can help you, but you should really eat something before that.”

“Danny?” Larry pushes himself up so that he’s sitting and puts his head down between his knees as he hugs his legs. It’s easier to control the nausea that way. Maybe if he runs in the right direction, he can make it back to the Bureau of Normalcy before Flex can catch him. They’ll probably tear him to pieces for even trying to escape, even if it really wasn’t his idea and he didn’t even _want_ to come, but it’d be easier to handle than whatever they’re definitely already planning on doing if they find the two of them and get him back.

“Friend of mine. They can give us shelter. They’ll keep us safe, I promise. They’re a good friend. They gave me a way to contact them, but I don’t want to try it while we’re still so close to the Ant Farm. They’ll probably want to catch them the way they caught us, or they’ll just destroy them on sight.” Flex smiles. Larry, peering up at him through his knees, goes back to looking at the leafy ground.

“Just out of curiosity,” he asks, watching a spider with long spindly legs burrow under a stick before crawling out again and going over it instead, which could be a metaphor if Larry cared enough to know what metaphor was, “which direction is the Ant Farm?”

Flex helpfully points over Larry’s head. “About thirty miles that way,” he says, clearly oblivious as to why Larry wanted to know. Larry chokes on air and tastes bile. How fucking fast can this guy _run,_ anyway? True, he’s got no idea how long he was out for, but it couldn’t have been _that_ long, and no matter how long he was asleep it’s still impressive. Especially since he was carrying Larry with him. “Why?”

Larry struggles to his feet and leans heavily on one of the trees behind him. He’s not sure he’ll be able to outrun Flex, but he can at least try, even if he feels like his insides are on fire. He has to at least try. Flex moves to support him and Larry steps back, almost tripping over a log. 

That _thing_ inside him moves and he automatically rubs at his chest with his thumb. If that thing ruins this for him, it’ll be an all out war. First it helps this fucking Looney Tune break him out of the Ant Farm, something that’s going to get him in _so_ much trouble once Forsythe and the rest of his team captures him again, and now it considers stopping him from going back to make the punishment easier to bear? It had _better_ not even _try_ to stop him. It had fucking _better_ not.

Of course, Larry spins around and immediately falls flat on his face as the darkness rushes up to meet him and he sits up to see a familiar scene around him.

The walls of Bishop John Carroll High School are a flat white color, marred with brownish grey stains through years of hands touching them. Larry used to remember all the marks he was responsible for. He doesn’t anymore. He looks around, trying to catch his breath. Trying to figure out if everything was a dream and this is real or if everything else was real and this was a dream. It’s surprisingly difficult. Maybe it’s because he wants this to be real. He wants it so, so badly.

“What’s wrong?” Sheryl says from beside him. She’s holding his hand. Fingers laced tightly together. She tilts her head at him. She’s got none of the lines in her face from stress and anxiety that he knows she’ll have when she gets older. (Most of them are his fault.) Instead, she’s smiling, dark eyes cheerful. She’s wearing her favorite pink shirt and pale blue skirt. A boy a year or two younger than them runs by, slowing down to look at her appreciatively until Larry glares at him and he scurries off. “You look worried.”

“Didn’t get much sleep last night,” Larry hears himself saying. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to keep studying Sheryl’s face the way he did a thousand times back then. When he was trying to convince himself that he really did have romantic feelings for her. That he really was in love with her. When he was a kid, he’d thought that if he just pretended hard enough to like Sheryl and to make eyes at his female teachers and classmates, everything would fall into place. Even when he got older, he clung to the hope that one day he would wake up and he would be cured.

Sheryl smiles shyly at him and leans up and forward to whisper something in his ear. If he tried hard enough, he could probably remember what she really said. But just like when this memory actually happened, he gets distracted, eyes lingering on one of the boys in their grade who always skips class and gets terrible grades and who has a dozen girls fawning over him at any given time, who throws his head back and laughs loudly at the way one of his friends is imitating a teacher, and Larry—

He wakes up flat on his back, staring up at the canopy crowding against his view of the cloudy sky. He’s breathing hard but can’t seem to catch his breath, can’t seem to stop the ache in his ribs, the tight terrified feeling and crushing pain behind his eyes.

“Sorry, buddy,” Flex says from somewhere off to the left, and then his face pops into view as he bends over Larry’s body. “I don’t think Sparky liked that much. I didn’t either, just to be honest with you. You shouldn’t try to go back there. They were torturing the two of you. You can’t possibly want to actually go back to them.”

“Fuck you,” Larry wheezes out as he licks some blood off his lips. _You don’t know me, just because you know the fucking_ monster _living_ inside _me doesn’t mean you know_ me. _You’re just a fucking puffed up bodybuilder wearing no clothes, what the hell do_ you _know?_

“Hmm.” Flex says. He doesn’t sound particularly angry. “I think you may need Danny’s help more than I thought. I was going to try to find Dolores first and get Danny later, but…”

Larry hauls himself to his feet once again, even though he feels even _more_ shaky this time. “No. Leave me the hell alone. Just let me go back there.” He tries very hard not to cry. It hurts a lot when he cries. The tears literally burn his skin. “Just leave me alone.”

The thing in his chest crackles. Somehow Larry can _feel_ that it’s angry. He doesn’t know if Flex can see the blue-white glow through the suit, but judging by the way he tilts his head and studies Larry’s torso he’s betting that he can at least _hear_ the thing’s furious humming. He’s not totally sure if Flex thinks that _Larry_ can hear it, too, but it honestly doesn’t even matter. It doesn’t fucking matter.

“No can do, buddy.” Flex reaches out once more, and this time Larry’s muscles don’t respond fast enough to get him out of reach. He pats Larry heavily on the shoulder. “I know it’s hard. And I know you’re scared.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “I’m a bit scared too, you know. But we’re going to be okay. We’ll tell the president that the Bureau of Normalcy is targeting innocent people, and then that’ll be that.”

“Didn’t you say we were in the Pentagon?” Larry’s bones hurt too much for him to try to get away again, and he slides down onto the ground once more. They should probably move if they don’t want the agents catching up to them, especially since _they’ll_ actually have cars and planes and things, but he’s certainly not going to be the one to tell Flex that. “If we were in the Pentagon, then Kennedy probably already knows about it.”

Flex opens his mouth, then furrows his eyebrows and closes it. Then opens it again. Then closes it again. “Hmm,” he says. He rubs his chin. “Hmm.”

Larry braces his hands against his knees. “You think the president of the goddamn United States cares people like—” He makes an aborted hand gesture. “They all think we’re freaks, and they’re _right._ The Bureau of Normalcy is just doing what everyone thinks should be done. They’re just trying to fix me. Us.”

“Well, I don’t think you need fixing,” Flex says, like that solves every problem.

Larry laughs at that. Short and bitter. “Really? I’m goddamn radioactive, I literally destroy the lives of everyone around me, I’m walking around with this fucking _thing_ inside my body that showed up and ruined my old life—I’m pretty sure the only thing that hates me more than I hate me is _it_ — _”_

“Keeg,” Flex interrupts loudly.

Larry stops short. “What?”

“Hir name is Keeg. You keep calling hir ‘that thing’ or ‘it,’ but hir name is Keeg. Ze told me while you were out. When we first met way back in our cells, I mean. Not just now.” Flex smiles. His teeth are way too straight and white to be real, right?

Larry grasps at his chest again. Somehow, he’d never even thought of the thing as having a real name. It was just that _thing_ in him. Ripping his old life to shreds and killing people, including Larry himself. Making him even more of a burden on everyone around him than he’d been before. Making it so that the only option was for him to die. Even kill himself, if he had to. It wasn’t something with a name. It—ze—was a monster.

Somehow, it was harder to think of it—think of hir as a monster, knowing that it—that ze had a name. Still easy to hate, but thinking of it—thinking of hir as some purely malicious evil felt… a bit more difficult, to say the least. Not impossible. Definitely not impossible. Just harder. Larry presses his fingers harder into his chest. It’s a bit difficult to feel through the rubbery material.

Flex pats Larry on the shoulder again. “Are you feeling any better?” He asks kindly. “I think we should try to get at least another twenty miles away before I call Danny for help. They can take me to Dolores once they get here.” Somehow sensing the look Larry’s giving him behind the suit, he smiles a bit wider. (Does this guy ever _stop_ smiling?) “I can carry you for a bit more if you’d like.”

“No, thanks.” A bit resigned, Larry pushes to his feet and follows Flex into the underbrush. Maybe if he’s lucky, the Bureau will catch up to them and take him back to that familiar nightmare where he gets ripped apart on a daily basis. Maybe if he’s _really_ lucky, his body will just give out and die before they get to wherever they’re supposed to be going.

But Larry’s never really been known for his luck.

* * *

Rita would consider herself pretty good at reading people and understanding body language. She had to be to make it in Hollywood. She thinks that when she was younger, the things other people did might as well have been Ancient Greek. Thankfully, she doesn’t remember much of that, replacing it with new information. What it means when someone frowns in a certain way, when they rub your knee and lick their lips, when they smile but their eyes don’t move, when they touch your arm but not your hand… she knows it all now. 

But one wouldn’t need to be as fluent in reading others as she is to be able to tell that Niles Caulder is _angry._

He can pretend all he likes. Rita knows better. He’s mad about something, even if he doesn’t want to tell her what it is. And, well, Rita _knows_ it’s irrational—Niles has been nothing but kind to her, taking her in out of the goodness of his heart (as he often reminded her) and teaching her to manage her condition as well as he could without living through it—but it does frighten her, a bit, to know that he’s angry. It just does. He’d never threatened her before, and she could count on both hands the amount of times he’d raised his voice to her. She shouldn’t be afraid of him. But she is. She _is,_ even if it’s ridiculous.

However, just because she’s a bit… on edge… around him while he’s like this, that doesn’t mean she’s going to stop pressuring him into telling her what the problem is to see if she can do anything to fix it. And after the fifth time she asks, he finally gives in.

“For some time now, I’ve had my eye on someone who is… quite like you,” Niles says softly. He reaches out to rest his hand on top of hers, and Rita’s insides go hot as her heart starts fluttering in her ears. It’s been over five years, he wouldn’t try to—not _now,_ surely? He wouldn’t, would he? After this long? “A pilot who had a crash and an encounter with something extraterrestrial in origin. He was transferred to a facility in DC. I’m afraid they did terrible experiments on him there. I was hoping I would be able to rescue him.”

Rita gets a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. It sits on top of the other bad feeling that has lived down there since she first noticed that he was angry and rolls around with the bad feeling that comes from Niles touching her hand until there’s just one massive terrible feeling that makes her feel like she’s going to throw up all over this very nice dress and these very nice shoes. “He didn’t _die,_ did he?”

“Oh, no.” Niles shakes his head. “He and another prisoner escaped.” Rita frowns a little at that. If this pilot escaped, why would Niles be upset? “Usually I would be quite happy for him, but since I have no idea where he went, I won’t be able to find him and offer him a home here. Unfortunately, his needs are so specialized that I doubt he’ll ever be able to find a place where he can truly be at home without needing to fear hurting himself or others. I could have made this that place for him, but…”

“Well, you’re the smartest man I know,” Rita says loyally. Feeling a little emboldened since he hasn’t done anything, and a little silly that she considered that he would when he’s made no prior attempts to be like _those people,_ she squeezes his hand. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find him. If there’s anything I can do, anything it all…”

“Now that you mention it,” Niles says a little bit _too_ quickly, though Rita tries not to pay attention to it, “there is one small thing you can do. I’ve managed to obtain a pass to visit their facility. I was hoping to learn a little more about the man’s condition. If you could accompany me for, shall we say, moral support, it would be very much appreciated.”

Rita thinks it over. She can stay together for that long, can’t she? She’s been living with Niles for this long, it might be a way for her to prove to him that she really is improving, since even though he’s seen her at her best, he’s also seen her at her absolute worst.

Slowly, she nods. “I’ll come. It’ll be a nice chance to see the outside world, don’t you think?” A thought occurs to her. “But—you won’t tell them, will you?” Rita lifts her free hand and winds it through her hair, pretending to smooth it down instead of twisting it around her fingers to pull when Niles gives her a stern look. She lowers her voice. “About my condition?”

“Of course not.” Niles withdraws his hand. She almost chases it. Almost. She knows she’s lucky he agreed after she showed him such a strong symptom of her condition, tugging at her hair like that. In that regard at least, this is more a favor to her than it is a favor to him. “And even if they did somehow find out, I would never let them take you away. You know that, don’t you? You’re too important.”

Rita lifts her chin and smiles. She doesn’t quite know if she’s actually, truly valued by Niles, but every time he says something like that, she gets a little closer to believing it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CW:** this chapter contains internalized homophobia, unintentional misgendering, self-hatred/Larry's typical self-blame for things he perceives to be his fault, implied torture from the Bureau of Normalcy, ableism, and relatively violent (as well as potentially borderline sexual, but not intended to be) threats against Rita.]

Flex stretches. Not a single one of his bones cracks. It’s kind of freaky. “This seems like a good enough place to stop.”

Larry, who has been praying for his heart to silently stop for the last eight hours (or months, or years. Same difference, really), sighs and wonders if Flex will catch him if he falls flat on his face. Probably not. “Really? You said that five fucking hours ago.”

“You know, you shouldn’t swear,” Flex remarks. Larry kind of wants to strangle him, but he’s honestly not totally sure that his hands will fit around his neck. “It sets a bad precedent.”

“Fuck off.” The thing—Keeg, he’s trying to think of hir as  _ Keeg  _ and not  _ the monster,  _ even though it—even though ze definitely doesn’t deserve for him to think of hir like that considering how ze’s ruined his damn  _ life— _ hums in unison with him. He hopes ze’s agreeing with him. It’d be a nice change of pace.

Flex plants his hands on his hips. “Yeah, this place should be far enough. Nice open stretch right there, they should fit in just fine while we get onboard. Here, pal, why don’t you stand back a little. They’re gonna want some breathing room.”

“You still haven’t told me who your friend  _ is,”  _ Larry hisses, but he steps back anyway. He’s too tired to care at this point. He’s hungry and thirsty and every part of him hurts in that kind of bone-deep way that nothing can immediately solve.

“I did tell you. Their name is Danny, and they’ll be able to protect us and Dolores at the same time.” Flex motions for Larry to step back even more, which he does even though his muscles scream in protest. “There, that’s good enough.”

Before Larry can ask any more questions, Flex puts two fingers in his mouth and  _ whistles,  _ so loud and sharp and reverberating that for a moment Larry wonders if he’s having auditory hallucinations, because  _ how  _ could a human being’s mouth make that kind of noise?

But even as he’s opening his mouth to ask what the  _ hell  _ is going on, there’s a sharp chirping sound and a warm breeze and something  _ unfolds  _ in the middle of the clearing they’ve stopped in front of. For a beat Larry’s brain can’t even really register what it is that he’s seeing, and then it clicks.

There’s a  _ street  _ in the clearing. An entire street. A small one, sure, but a  _ street.  _ It just appeared out of nowhere. Does Flex’s friend control streets, or something? Have his auditory hallucinations bumped themselves up to audiovisual ones? That would make sense. Maybe they're getting more vivid because he finally decided to stop fighting them. Or something.

Flex shoves him forward from behind, pushing him into the street. It’s a lot… pinker… than Larry originally noticed. Familiar army and navy stores decked out in beautiful pink, yellow, and blue frills, curling white signs that say things like  _ Flex! I haven’t seen you in ages, why the distress signal?  _ and  _ Is Dolores okay?  _ and  _ Who’s your friend? Are they alright?  _ and  _ I’ll jump us away, just give the word. _

Larry doesn’t absorb much of it, though. Really, hardly any of it properly registers.

For what feels like the millionth time that day, Larry’s vision goes black, and he falls flat on his face. At least this time, blissfully, he doesn’t have any dreams.

(Flex catches him, of course.)

* * *

When Larry wakes up, he feels different. Much different.

It takes him a second to put his finger on what exactly is so strange, but when he does, he shoots upright, looking around wildly to make sure there’s nobody else around before staring down at his hands with wide eyes.

Everything is tinted darker than it was through the lens of that suit, and when he lifts his fingers he can feel a pair of goggles on his head that  _ definitely  _ weren’t there before, but even with the dimness he can see (and feel) that he’s not in the thick rubbery suit or in the harsh grey scrubs anymore. Instead, every inch of skin is covered in a fine layer of bandaging that feels weirdly cool to the touch in a way that soothes his raw and scarred skin.

Did Flex do this? If so, why? And how in the world did he manage it without irradiating himself and anybody else around? He knows he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but as much as Larry doesn’t particularly like or care about Flex, the guy doesn’t deserve to get  _ irradiated.  _ Although maybe if he did he would be less inclined to talk to Keeg like ze  _ wasn’t  _ a monster responsible for ruining the lives of countless fucking people. That wouldn’t be a half bad result.

“Hey, buddy! You’re looking a lot better!” 

Of course, Larry could never be that lucky. “Oh. Hi, Flex.”

Flex sits down in the seat beside him and for the first time Larry notices that he’s in a real bed. Well, his brain notices. His aching body evidently noticed quite some time ago. “Sparky was real glad to be out of that suit, I’ll tell you what. I bet you are too, right?”

“How did you get me out?” Larry asks instead of properly answering. Flex doesn’t seem at all worried about radiation. Even Sheryl and John had been afraid of him. For good reason. “I told you I’m radioactive.”

“Oh, I didn’t. George and Marion did.” Flex waves a hand. “Danny said they would be able to help, and they were! And I helped get Danny this room set up for you so you can take them off if you like without hurting anybody. But they’re magic, or something. They said I should tell you not to think about it too hard.”

Dizzy from the rush of information, Larry touches at his head, running his fingers over the strap of the goggles again. The thing—Keeg buzzes in his chest in response. Somehow, Larry can feel hir turning over in a way he couldn’t before, pale blue glow shimmering through the white material of the bandage. “I—how does Danny have the  _ money  _ to do all of this?”

“Oh, they don’t need money or anything like that. They just create it.” Flex holds out the bundle of cloth that Larry’s just now noticing in his arms. “Here, you should get dressed so I can show you around. You need to eat something. Marion said you were dehydrated and that’s one of the reasons why you passed out.”

Larry looks at the clothes. The last time he wore real clothes was… well. He doesn’t know how long ago it was, because he doesn’t know what year it is. A long time ago. The day he had the crash. That could’ve been a decade ago, for all he knows. (Shit, Kennedy probably isn’t president anymore, is he?) He kind of wants to wear real clothes again. He kind of really wants to.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Flex says brightly, setting the pile of clothes down on the blankets in front of him. “Just come meet me outside when we’re done, and I’ll introduce you to Dolores and you can come get some food.”

“...Okay.” Larry watches him leave. This is all going  _ way  _ too fast. He was just  _ in  _ the Ant Farm. He was just getting tortured and having it quite literally beaten into him that he deserved it because of the thing living inside of him. The  _ things  _ living inside of him.

Maybe the truth was that the—that Keeg (why did it matter so much to him that he called hir by the right name? He shouldn’t be respecting hir. It. Dammit) had found him because Larry was already a monster. Like recognizing like. Ze had seen the awful wanting inside of him and made hirself at home because of it. Or something. Larry had thought about that possibility a lot. It wasn’t very comforting. But it kept him from blaming John for the plane’s malfunctioning, and that was what really mattered, wasn’t it?

“How do you feel about all of this?” He asks aloud, feeling a bit stupid.

The only answer he gets is a slightly stronger glow and a loud rumble from his stomach. He really  _ is  _ hungry. Maybe this experience won’t be so bad.

It’s not hard to find his way out of the room, through a decontamination chamber, and down out of what is apparently a flower shop once he’s put his new clothes on. He wishes he could feel the textures through the bandages, they seem like they would feel so nice. Or maybe they wouldn’t because of his scarred skin. They’re a nice green color, though. That’s something he can enjoy with no strings attached except some wondering about what it would look like if he took the goggles off.

Flex is waiting for him outside, talking to a woman in a polka-dot dress with a big red bow in her hair that he’s never seen before. Larry guesses that that’s Dolores. Flex’s sweetheart. Great. Just great. He hopes he’s not going to have to interrupt them. An easy way to convince other men, especially men like Flex, that you’re on the same wavelength as them is to be loud and interrupt the people around you, and even though Larry’s more than  _ capable  _ of doing it, he doesn’t  _ like  _ to.

Luckily, Flex shouts “Larry!” as soon as he sees him, and the woman who’s probably Dolores turns around expectantly. Flex throws his arms up and Larry shies back. “Dolores, this is Larry. And that’s Keeg.” He gestures to the faint glow underneath Larry’s clothes and bandages. He seems like he’s already used to the fact that Larry’s sharing a body with this… something. Larry  _ himself  _ isn’t even used to it, and from what he can tell it’s been at  _ least  _ a year since ze got stuck inside him. “Larry, Keeg, this my wife Dolores.”

Wife.  _ Wife.  _ How the hell does a guy like Flex have a  _ wife?  _ It’s not like Larry can’t see why she’d be attracted to him, of course. The guy’s mostly naked and that puts to rest any doubts that there’s a single part of him that isn’t insanely musclebound. He’s got a square jaw and a nice big nose and strong eyebrows. That’s all fine and good. But he also never stops smiling and has an absolutely infuriating speech pattern and seems to think a great deal of himself.

Dolores holds her hand out, smiling, and Larry carefully shakes it. It’s shocking how normal he feels. Like he’s meeting the wife of one of the boys at the base for the first time, about to tell her stories about what a troublemaker he is. Politely, he says, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“And Larry, this is Danny,” Flex continues, throwing his arms out instead of up this time. Larry automatically looks around, but he doesn’t see anyone.

Above Flex’s head, a giant yellow banner unfurls from a wire that says  _ Hello, Larry! It’s nice to finally meet you! I hope your room was satisfactory.  _ At the bottom, smaller letters in a different font pop in out of nowhere and arrange themselves to say  _ And hello again, Keeg.  _

“Um.” Larry takes a long second to process. “What’s going on here, exactly? Is Danny the, uh…”

Dolores giggles into her hand. Flex keeps smiling like this is totally normal and not at all weird. “Danny is the street, yes.”

“Okay.” Larry rubs at his forehead. He gets the strangest feeling that somewhere inside him, Keeg (it shouldn't, but every time it gets easier to think of hir by name) is laughing at him. Or whatever the equivalent of laughing is for hir. “Okay. So. The street is a he?”

“Not a  _ he, _ ” Dolores corrects. Her voice is just as chirpy as Larry was expecting it to be, because of course it is. As she speaks, the letters on the cheerful banner rearrange once more. “Danny’s not a he or a she. Danny’s something else.”

“Okay. Alright.” Larry keeps trying to process the fact that the street is talking to him, looking up at the words  _ I’m something else entirely, love. You don’t have to use any pronouns at all for me, if you like. Or you can use something that isn’t  _ he  _ or  _ she.  _ Flex likes to use  _ they  _ and  _ them  _ for me.  _ Honestly, that’s a whole lot easier to deal with than the talking street thing. He knew someone like that once. Only for a brief moment in time. They’d danced with him, outside eyes sure enough of their gender that the two of them wouldn’t be questioned if they were seen together. This was different, anyway. Of course a street wouldn’t be a man or a woman. It was a street. “And, uh, I liked it. My room. Thank you.”

_ Almost everyone lives above a shop here, but we can always switch it up if you like.  _ This time, it isn’t a banner, it’s the steam from a manhole cover drifting up to form the words just long enough for Larry to read and properly absorb them.  _ Find you a nice bakery instead of a flower shop. _

“No, no,” Larry says fast. “I like… flowers.” It’s a stupid thing to say. Everything he could possibly say is a stupid thing to say. If he stops to think about it, he can still feel their boots against his ribs and hear the crackle of electricity from their prods. He can see the cells that he was dragged past. And now he’s standing here, wrapped in bandages and wearing clean new clothes instead of what can only be described as a reverse HAZMAT suit. Talking to a street.

“Flex said you were hungry,” Dolores says. Her smile is kind. She doesn’t look much like Sheryl, but maybe Larry could try closing his eyes and pretending. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. Danny won’t let anything happen to us.”

* * *

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Niles assures her as he presses the button to make them descend, and Rita wishes she could really believe it.

The walls of the elevator are dark. It’s not damp, the air actually feels much too dry, but that’s hardly a comfort. Rita pretends to adjust her skirt as an excuse to squeeze the soft fabric and rub it between her fingers. She can do this. She knows she can. It’s literally just like acting. This is just another role that she’s been preparing for. And she’s  _ Rita Farr, _ dammit. She doesn’t break in front of the cameras. 

Everything will be fine. Everything will be totally fine.

When the elevator doors open, there’s a small cluster of men waiting for them. All of them are in uniform and wearing the same patch with the same symbol. Their logo, Rita assumes. The man in the lead smiles and holds out his hand. Niles shakes it.

“This way, Dr. Caulder,” he says. Rita mentally dubs him as The Man In Black because he’s obviously not going to introduce himself. When she steps forward to follow Niles, he jerks his head slightly and one of the people behind him rests his hand on his gun and moves to block her way. “Authorized visitors only, ma’am.”

“I told you she would be coming with me, Forsythe.” Niles narrows his eyes at The Man In Black. Well, now she knows his name, so she doesn’t have to think of him like that. Good, it probably would’ve gotten tiring. “Where I go, Ms. Farr goes.”

Forsythe eyes her before signaling to the man who came up to her to step back. “Fine. Come on. The file room is this way.”

Rita times herself to perfectly keep pace with Niles. She doesn’t want to be any farther than him than she has to be. This place is  _ creepy  _ and the people staffing it seem to be even creepier. She hopes she’s putting up as good a show of comfort as Niles is and prays none of them realize how terrified she is. Rita can’t exactly regret agreeing to come with him, she meant it when she said she’d do anything he wanted her to do, and she really does hope he can help this place’s escaped prisoner, but at the same time she wishes she were curled up in her warm bed with a book and a rum runner.

She can’t help but notice the rubble lining the halls. The way some of the doorways they pass are taped off. Perhaps they were destroyed when the poor soul Niles was trying to help escaped? She can’t imagine it was an easy feat. This place seems to have better armor than the White House.

Even though Forsythe is leading the way, most of the agents he had with him are bringing up the rear, and Rita can  _ feel  _ their eyes burning into her. Once upon a time that would have made her lift her chin up higher. It would have made her proud. She’d always loved being the center of attention, whether that attention came from her parents, stage directors, producers, her classmates before she’d been pulled out of school to focus on her career… but now it feels like they’re all waiting for her to slip up so they can tear her to pieces. Literally, if even half the things Niles told her about this place are true.

(Taking away the literal aspect of it, Rita supposes this isn’t  _ so  _ different from any other audition or role she’s played. That helps her concentrate, some. She always was better at playing a part than she was at being herself.)

“I can’t allow both of you to go inside,” Forsythe says suddenly, and Rita realizes that they’ve stopped. “All of this is classified. Dr. Caulder has special permission. You don’t, Ms. Farr.” She doesn’t like how he says her name. Hungry. It’s not unfamiliar, but that doesn’t make it feel any better. “You’ll have to wait out here with the boys until we’re done.”

Rita looks at Niles for backup, because she does  _ not  _ want to stay out here in an unfamiliar location with a bunch of unfamiliar men, but he’s shaking his head at her. “It won’t take me long. Just stay out here and don’t wander off.”

She looks away. She’s not a  _ child.  _ She’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions. It just so happens that the decision she’s making right now is to follow Niles’ orders.  _ Not  _ Forsythe’s, she doesn’t have to listen to him, she’s not someone he can boss around, but Niles’. That makes it better, doesn’t it? It should.

“So you’re  _ the  _ Rita Farr, huh?” One of the men watching her says suddenly, a few moments after Niles heads inside with Forsythe. She twitches instead of nodding. “My sister loved your movies.” He looks her up and down and she tucks her hands behind her back instead of threading them through her hair. Show no fear. Show no weakness. This is just like any other stage. “We’ve all heard a  _ lot  _ about you.”

One of his buddies elbows him in the ribs, cutting off the start of a cruel laugh. That throws Rita for a loop, but she tries not to let it show. These are all actors, just like her. She’s the star. They can’t touch her. They can’t hurt her, not in any real way that matters. She did her own stunts all the time, if they try to do anything it’ll be just like that. She smiles. The best way to fake a smile is to crinkle up the corners of your eyes so people will  _ really  _ believe that it’s real. Everyone makes that mistake. That’s how people see through you. “Good things, I hope?”

“You could say that.” It’s a different man this time. Not the one that laughed or the one who elbowed him to get him to shut up. He’s taller than they are, and a bit older. Probably a superior officer. He’s taller than she is, too. He could overpower her easily, if he tried. Rita hates that she thinks about it. She hates that she’s  _ still  _ thinking about it. It’s not going to happen. Niles is right there. They wouldn’t risk it, would they?

Rita swallows but doesn’t let her smile slip. She can’t let it slip. She can’t let any part of her slip. Just keep breathing. She has a script for these scenarios. True, they’ve never been applicable for something  _ exactly  _ like this, mainly for meeting fans unexpectedly or crew members who already knew that she was going to be a nightmare to work with but had to be polite about it, but she can follow it now. “Well, I’m glad to know that my reputation precedes me.”

The first man who spoke grins. It’s not a very nice smile. The guy next to him looks extremely fed up with him, and none of the others look all that impressed themselves. Rita can’t help but relate. “Yeah, it’s always good to get a chance to meet the merchandise beforehand.”

The door opens up again before Rita can ask what the  _ fuck— _ or, what the  _ hell  _ that’s supposed to mean. But however uncomfortable she was while she was alone with them pales in comparison to the shudder of disgust that runs through her when Forsythe looks at her as he walks out beside Niles. She wants to get  _ out  _ of here. Now.

Niles doesn’t look happy, but he’s clearly hiding a file under his light jacket, so Rita hopes that means he got what they came for without anybody noticing.  _ How  _ they couldn’t notice is beyond her, it truly is, since he’s clearly got one of their files and they’re probably much more trained at spotting when people are hiding things than she is, but she’s just glad they don’t. Rita tugs at her hair without thinking. She just wants to leave before anything serious has a chance to go horribly wrong.

“I think it’s time you both left,” Forsythe says firmly, and Rita almost opens her mouth to agree before he looks at her again with that same expression and her ability to properly form words immediately fails her. He just looks so… hungry. Phantom fingers touch at her legs, and she nervously smooths down her skirt with one hand and twists the fingers of the other through her hair even though she knows Niles can see her doing it. She still wants to agree. But NIles hasn’t said anything, so maybe they’re going to stay here for a little while longer, and Rita has no idea if she’ll be able to handle that.

But no. When Niles  _ does  _ speak after a moment of silent inspection of her—she can see the interest on his face, which is good. Interest isn’t always better than disapproval when it comes to Niles, but she can hope it is now—all he says is, “That shouldn’t be a problem. I think we have everything we need.”

On their way back through the hallway to the elevator, Rita practically runs, though hopefully she manages to disguise it enough as determined walking to fool the agents who are  _ still  _ watching her like  _ that. _ Luckily it’s a fairly straight shot. She can  _ feel  _ herself breaking down. She’s not even sure why. She was doing  _ fine.  _ Everything was  _ fine.  _ Maybe it’s just because of how close things were to being over? Her body just decided to give in at the last second because of how close it was to freedom?

As soon as Niles is inside the elevator with her, she sags against the wall, physically holding her face up. She can feel Niles watching her and prays he isn’t too angry and ashamed. And that what was noticeable to him wasn’t to anybody else. Just like how she wanted herself to be the only one who noticed he had taken a file. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly when he doesn’t say anything to reprimand her. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry.”

“You did your best.” He sounds oddly calm. That’s nice. Rita doesn’t know if she could handle him being upset with her right now. “I managed to get my hands on another file when Forsythe wasn’t looking, for the prisoner who escaped with the missing captain. Hopefully they’ll have enough on the two of them that we can find them and get ahold of the pilot before the Bureau can recapture him. I don’t think I ever told you his name, did I? It’s Trainor, Captain Lawrence Trainor.”

Rita doesn’t know that he’s lying. For all her thoughts of how good she is at reading people, she still hasn’t figured out that Niles only shows her what he wants her to see. Rita doesn’t know the real reason why he let her come with him.

She doesn’t know that Larry wasn’t the only one that Niles promised would belong to Forsythe and his team one day. Or that with two of their best assets gone, they were currently on the market for a new test subject while they searched for their escapees. How could she know that when it wasn’t something that Niles  _ wanted  _ her to know?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway there!
> 
> [ **CW:** this chapter contains internalized homophobia, emotional manipulation/abuse, misgendering, and self-hatred/blame.]

The milkshake that Dolores and Flex practically force on Larry tastes amazing. It’s probably the best thing he’s had in years. Definitely the best thing he’s had since the crash. They mostly clumsily force-fed him or pumped shit directly into his veins at the Ant Farm, and before that when he was in quarantine he mostly just got whatever liquid they thought he needed. A milkshake isn’t the same as a stack of pancakes or a burger with fries but it’s  _ something  _ good and that’s what counts.

“Aren’t you glad I didn’t let you go back to the Ant Farm?” Flex says cheerfully. He’s sitting in the seat beside him, with Dolores perched somewhat precariously on his lap and enjoying a milkshake of her own. “It’s much nicer here.”

Larry doesn’t answer that. It is nicer here. More comfortable. And he’s not being tortured. But… he doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to sit here in the sunshine with a chocolate milkshake on a fucking  _ talking street.  _ He doesn’t deserve any of this. At least whenever the Bureau hurt him, he knew it was just the universe getting back at him for all the shit he’d done. For fucking over Sheryl and John and letting his… whatever you wanted to call it, affliction or  _ whatever  _ hurt people. This, though? He didn’t deserve any of this.

A soft sound hums through the air on the breeze to direct him down to the menu laying on the table next to him. When Larry looks down at it, the words rearrange themselves to say  _ Penny for your thoughts, love?  _ Instead of  _ Special of the Day: New England Clam Chowder. _

Larry shakes his head. At least it gets easier to talk to them every time he has to. “It’s nothing, Danny. I’m just tired.” It’s true, even if it’s an oversimplification. He’s been so tired for so long now… everything is exhausting. There’s fatigue living in his bones. It’s so hard to stay awake, even though he knows that when he’s asleep Keeg will have free reign to roam and can do whatever the hell ze wants. Even hurt people if he isn’t careful about where he lets hir out. “That’s all.”

“If you need to go back to your room and sleep, that’s okay,” Flex says as he readjusts Dolores’ position on his lap. They seem like a sweet couple. Larry’s not sure why it makes his stomach clench to see them. “Just remember to bring some food with you, you need to eat.” One of the muscles in his upper arm clenches and a plate full of turkey pastrami sandwiches appears in front of him.

Larry eyes the plate of sandwiches. He’s not sure he wants to ask where they came from, but how the hell does he know they’re safe to eat? Did Flex teleport them in or did he just create them with his mind somehow? If he did, what are they made of? But they  _ do  _ look good, and his steadily disappearing milkshake doesn’t exactly have a lot of nutritional value.

“I can wait a little,” he says finally. It is kind of nice to be outside in the sun, even if he can’t feel it. He’s not too hot because the bandages feel so weirdly cool, and he can pretend that the goggles are just sunglasses. He can pretend that things are normal. “At least until I finish this. I’ll make sure to bring the sandwiches with me back up to my room.” He’s pretty sure he remembers what the outside of the place he’s living above looked like.  _ Pretty  _ sure. He hesitates for a second before adding, “Thanks, Flex.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Flex says. He pats Dolores on the shoulder and she smiles too before kissing his nose. Larry looks away. At least it isn’t personal. Seeing that kind of thing has always made something in his chest feel funny. The longing and the anxiety all tangled up into one thing that has its hooks way down deep inside of him and whispers that he’ll  _ never  _ be able to have something like that because of who he is. “We just want you to feel better. Everyone here does.”

Before Larry can go back to thinking about how he doesn’t deserve that from them, a loud shriek rings out from closeby and he jumps, automatically hugging onto his shoulders (he really needs to get a coat) and shivering. Flex and Dolores don’t seem too bothered, and when Larry manages to track down the source of the sound, he sees that it’s… 

Just a kid. Not an emergency. She’s maybe ten or eleven, running down the middle of the street with a huge smile on her odd face, pigtails bouncing behind her. There’s a taller woman chasing her, and they run right by Larry without giving him a second glance, though the girl  _ does  _ wave at Flex. She’s the youngest person Larry’s seen living on Danny by far. Somehow, he’d assumed that everyone here was an adult. Old enough to make the choice to live here, running from people who recognized the freaks they’d grown into and were making the (right?) decision to break that part of them away from the rest. 

Of  _ course  _ that was a ridiculous assessment. There were probably more children here, he just hadn’t seen them. There’s a funny tickling feeling at the back of his throat when he thinks about that. He can’t even pinpoint why. It’d be just like growing up anywhere else, wouldn’t it? It’d be just like growing up anywhere else. Just… without the fear of anyone targeting you for being different, and without the learned hatred of yourself for those differences, and without the lessons to avoid the people who  _ were  _ different. Just like growing up anywhere else.

“Looks like your milkshake’s all gone,” Dolores comments. She looks so  _ at home  _ in Flex’s lap. It’s honestly jarring. She’s not exactly  _ small,  _ and Larry’s pretty sure she’s taller than Sheryl was—is, but compared to Flex she might as well be the size of a doll. Larry can’t imagine how he himself must look next to him. “We could walk you back to your room, if you’d like.”

“No, no, that’s okay—” Larry hugs his shoulders again. He really does need a jacket. Something to hide behind, anyway. It’s not  _ cold.  _ But—fucking hell, so many of his walls have been smashed down by the Bureau or by Flex or by Danny or by Keeg—by the thing inside of him. He needs to put at least one of them back up. Even if it’s just something stupid and simple. “Or… actually, do either of you know where I could get a change of clothes?”

Flex and Dolores end up pulling him down the street (down Danny?) into a store with pink fairy lights decorating the windows—after Flex does his… whatever the hell it is that he does and makes the sandwiches disappear and supposedly reappear in Larry’s room. Larry tries to avoid looking at the mannequins in the front displays. The flowery yellow and fuchsia tones of the dresses don’t make him feel any better. He just wants a jacket. Something heavy. He’s not looking to purchase a prom dress for Dolores or anything.

The tiny person running the store circles Larry a good five times as they shake their head and click their tongue before slipping past the rows of skirts and pulling out three jackets. One is a mix of brown and yellow, one is green, and one is pale pink. They’re all a similar style, like the coats some of the boys would wear back home. It makes the inside of his mouth taste funny.

He disregards the pink one right away, and even though the brown one is fine the way it feels is somehow all wrong even though he’s touching it through bandages. But the green one is nice, and when he looks closer the stitching around the hem is decorated with tiny hidden flower patterns. Just enough to make him smile and remember when he’d absently picked a bundle of carnations and lavender when he was twelve, the way the stems and leaves and petals had felt in his hands. His mother had called him back inside a few minutes later, and he’d never been able to find the patch again and it’s not like carnations even naturally grew in North Dakota, but he’d felt so free as he imagined keeping them and handing them to the most beautiful boy in his class—

Maybe what he’d said about not minding that he was living above a flower shop now had been stupider than he’d realized. Maybe it had been a bit of an understatement. Larry had never really thought of himself as somebody who was interested in nature as a whole. He’d taken a passing interest in birds because John had liked them. But when he thought about it… there had always been something nice about flowers.

“I’ll take this one,” Larry says finally, right before he realizes that he has absolutely no money. In his chest, he can feel Keeg—dammit, he  _ needs  _ to stop thinking of hir by name—turn over anxiously. He automatically touches his thumb to his sternum. “Oh. Oh, shit. I’m sorry, I don’t have any—I don’t have any money. I’m sorry.” Or at least that’s what he tries to say. It comes out a bit too choked.

For some reason, there’s a burning in the back of his throat. It’s stupid. He’s cried about a lot of things these past few years, but this is by far the most ridiculous. It’s a  _ jacket.  _ It’s nothing. But earlier, Flex and Dolores presumably paid for his milkshake, so he didn’t even realize that he didn’t have any money. All the money he ever made belongs to Sheryl now. She deserves it, she does, after everything he’s put her through, but—but—maybe he just wanted  _ one thing.  _ One thing that he could have without any strings attached. And now he can’t have it.

Larry’s vision is too impeded to notice that the sign above him that says—or rather said— _ Feel Free to Ask About Custom Accommodations!  _ has changed to read  _ What’s the matter, dearie?  _ but he does notice when the smile fades off of Flex’s face and he exchanges a worried glance with Dolores. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

“I don’t have any money,” he gets out. He holds the jacket back out to the salesperson reluctantly. It still feels so nice and heavy in his arms. He hadn’t even realized how much he had been missing that wonderful feeling. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

Flex goes back to smiling so wide it seems like his face may split in half. Once again, Larry finds himself wondering how it’s possible for  _ anyone  _ to have teeth that white and straight. “Oh, that’s no problem!” He practically chirps. Dolores nods along in agreement. “We thought we told you. Nobody uses money on Danny. We don’t need to. We can get everything we need without it.”

“You… what?” Larry pulls the jacket back against his body. He can feel Keeg spin again, brushing against the inside of his ribcage somehow. He doesn’t need to look down to know that ze’s shimmering through the fabric of his shirt, his new bandages, and his skin. (It’s too difficult to think of hir as “that thing,” no matter how easy it should be to hold hir accountable for everything ze’s done.)

He wants to ask how they manage to get the materials if they don’t use money. Why they make everything in the first place if they don’t use money. Do they steal it? Does Danny make it? If Danny makes it, why not just have them instead of a salesperson? But none of that seems very important. What feels important is that his head hurts, and he gets to keep the jacket, and there’s food waiting for him if he goes back to where he’s staying.  _ That _ is what’s important.

That’s when Keeg slips out of his chest, and Larry’s world once again briefly flashes black.

When he blinks his eyes open, he’s in John’s arms.

Larry’s well aware that this isn’t real. That this  _ can’t  _ be real. It’s just another one of those stupid dreams that stupid thing gives him whenever ze leaves him, like ze knows exactly what to poke and prod at to get the strongest reaction out of him. Which, Larry supposes, ze does. That doesn’t make him feel any better about his subconscious decision to go back to calling hir by the right name instead of pushing against it whenever he can. 

Maybe Keeg noticed that he was starting to get more lenient, starting to consider making a truce with hir, and decided to remind him just what ze was capable of. Just how much ze hated Larry for doing damn near nothing but get stuck with hir while ze ruined Larry’s life around him. Around the both of them, for that matter.

So yeah, Larry knows that this isn’t real. That it can’t be real. But he still takes a second to breathe in deep and smell the hot summer air and the choking grass beneath his knees that’s full of anxiously chirping grasshoppers before he pulls back from John’s grip and punches him in the shoulder since that’s the closest he’ll be able to get to punching Keeg hirself.

“What was that for?” John says, surprised, and Larry pauses, because this doesn’t feel like a memory. This never happened. He and John had timed their meetings perfectly. Always at the same location, too. Never… wherever the hell this was. A meadow in the middle of nowhere that Larry was pretty sure he had never seen before in his life.

Bad enough that Keeg was invading his memories of the people he cared about most. Now that fucker thinks that ze can make up new ones for him to suffer through? Fuck this. He can’t believe he actually thought they might be able to work something out — and he  _ had  _ been thinking that, hadn’t he? Even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Well, that sure as fuck wasn’t happening now. Absolutely not.

“Hey, look at me. What’s wrong?” John asks quietly. Everything about him is the same. He might as well be real. If Larry didn’t know any better, he’d think this was a memory, not a nightmare. “You look worried.”

One of his hands comes up to cup Larry’s jaw, and for the first time Larry realizes that this contact isn’t painful. The new bandages Flex and/or Danny gave him have been helping with the pain a bit somehow, but before that… contact with anything was painful on his burned skin. And right now he’s not wearing the bandages. But… but… he’s still burned. He can  _ see  _ the burns. That’s almost as bad as the pain. The idea of the danger John is put in by touching him after the crash... it’s terrifying. This isn’t  _ real.  _ It’s a dream. But it’s a horrifying possibility all the same.

(It’s wrong to touch John with burnt hands, but he can’t stop himself. He’s taking his hands even as he pulls back. He hates that thing for this. He hates it so much. What kind of monster is it, to let him one tiny moment of happiness in getting something he actually wanted, only to push him back down and taunt him with something he wanted so desperately but never could have had?)

Larry jerks awake on the floor of the shop, sitting up fast and still clutching the jacket in his arms. Not bothering to accept Flex’s offered hand of assistance, he scrambles to get to his feet and storms out of the little shop, the jacket arms hitting weakly against the clothing he’s already wearing. It’s difficult to see through the goggles and the tears and the holes cut in the bandages, but since Danny is pretty straight, it’s barely a struggle to find the place he’s staying above.

The plate of sandwiches is waiting on the bedside table. Larry resists the urge to shove it onto the floor. He’s not a child, despite how much he feels like one when he throws himself down on the bed and curls up, breathing ragged as he struggles not to cry.

“Fuck you,” he hisses into the sheets. Keeg—that  _ thing  _ can hear him. Feel him. He knows ze can feel him. “What the fuck gives you the right to keep ruining my life, huh? What the fuck makes you think you can keep reminding me of everything you took from me, over and over and over again, huh? What the fuck gives you the right?”

The knot in his throat gets tighter and the tingling inside his ribs gets colder. There’s a ringing in his ears and a tearing inside his head and a faint hissing and humming that comes from nowhere. Maybe that thing is trying to talk to him. Trying to explain hirself. Well, Larry’s not going to listen to anything that fucker has to say to him.

Larry lays there fighting down sobs (he’s cried more in the time since the accident than he did when he was little after he found out that boys weren’t supposed to cry and that crying made you weak, though maybe not quite as weak as forbidden needs did) for what feels like hours. He can’t take much more of this. He has to get these clothes off. The bandages, too. Didn’t Flex say that he could take them off in here without hurting anyone? He needs to at least try.

When Larry rolls over onto his back, there’s writing on the ceiling, spelled out in the cracks in the plaster.

_ Do you want to talk about it?  _ Danny asks. The window across from him is closed, but somehow Larry can feel a warm breeze rippling through the bedroom all the same.  _ It might feel better if you get it off your chest. _

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Larry forces out. His mouth feels and tastes raw, but that’s not new. Great, another thing that’s all Keeg — that thing’s fault. “There’s nothing  _ to  _ talk about. It’s all just bullshit.”

The writing ripples and changes. This time, it’s accompanied by a faint comforting sound like a little bell ringing somewhere in the distance and a soft whistle to get his attention. At the very least, Larry appreciates the gesture not to overwhelm him with too many sounds.  _ Are you sure? I’ve been told I make a very good listener. _

Larry pushes up the goggles and presses his knuckles into his eyes. He screws up his face, but he’s not sure if Danny can see it. (Can they even see at all, or do they just feel things?) He really wants to say no again. Say that it’s none of Danny’s fucking business, because it’s  _ not.  _ Just like it’s not Flex’s business even if he insists on acting like it is. That’s what he should do, because if he tells Danny, that’ll just be putting the burden on other people. And it’ll be uncomfortably close to admitting things he doesn’t want to admit.

As much as Larry may hate it here, and as much as he still wishes he were back at the Bureau where they were intent on cutting the  _ wrong  _ parts out of him even if it meant that they had to torture him to do it, he still doesn’t want to get thrown out. If he says  _ anything,  _ he’ll have to be as careful as possible about it. Not that he’s going to say anything. Since again, none of this is Danny’s business, and Larry’s sure as hell not going to share it with them.

But there’s something nice about Danny. Something welcoming. They feel like John’s skin on his, somehow. All the best things about John and spring and broken carnation stems that stained his fingers green rolled into one. It’s a stupid, ridiculous sentiment. But something about Danny is comforting, and even though he knows what will happen if he shares too much, Larry can’t stop himself from talking as he lets his arms fall limp.

“This thing—” He starts, before cutting himself off when Danny scrawls more words on the ceiling that pointedly tell him that he can complain all he wants, but he’d better use Keeg’s name now that he knows it, or else Danny’s going to get cross with him. “Fine, have it your way.  _ Keeg  _ can give me dreams. Nightmares. Ze can take everything that’s happened to me and twist it up and spit it out and force me to relive it, over and over again, because… I don’t know! For hir own amusement, I guess! Because ze wants me to relive moments with the people whose lives I ruined!”

_ Whose lives do you think you ruined, dear?  _ Danny asks. They’re far, far too gentle for this.  _ I’m certain that whoever they are, that’s not the case. _

The laugh that tries to come out of Larry’s mouth strangles off halfway through. “Try my wife,” he grits out. “Try my sons, who probably don’t even know what happened to me. Try the doctors who operated on me to save my life, or at least tried to. Try the people at the Ant Farm that this—that Keeg killed.” Light glimmers briefly in his chest. “Try the boys who saw me crash and went out to get me to see if I had somehow made it through. John—”

He cuts himself off this time. If he starts talking about John he’ll never stop, and that will tell Danny far more than they need to know. Enough to make them hate him. But… that could be what Larry needs right now. Someone to  _ understand  _ why the people at the Ant Farm did what they did. Why Forscythe and his goons ripped him to pieces over and over again. Danny would understand, of course. They protect all these people. And even if there are parts of them that are clearly unnatural, they must understand protecting their citizens from people like Larry.

_ Who’s John?  _ Danny prods a little. This is written out in the faint fog on Larry’s bedroom’s singular window, which forces him to sit up a bit in the bed once Danny whistles faintly once more to draw his attention over to it. 

“My… mechanic.” Larry can’t say anything about their relationship. Not even if it would ruin everything. He never shared it with anyone at the Bureau no matter how hard they poked and prodded at him. They’d known he was a degenerate somehow without him saying anything, but they hadn’t known about John. Small mercies. No matter how much Larry had corrupted him by the end, John was innocent. He wouldn’t deserve anything the Bureau put him through. “John was my mechanic. He was the one who got closest to me after my crash. He didn’t… he didn’t seem hurt when I heard him later. But that was the last time I ever saw him.”

_ Sounds like he was more than just a mechanic,  _ Danny says. The best way to describe it is as a hum that makes Larry feel like he’s about to get sent into another round of crying.  _ It sounds like the two of you were very close. I imagine he’d been your friend for a long time. _

“Yeah,” Larry says hoarsely. That damn shine in his chest is back. Maybe that—maybe Keeg is eavesdropping. Trying to find more things that ze can use to torture him. “I guess you could say that.”

He  _ can’t  _ tell Danny or Flex or  _ anyone  _ about John and what they did. What they were. This is as close as he can get to admitting it. He’ll hold out for a little while longer before he tries to get Danny to bring him back to the Bureau of Normalcy where they can keep trying to cut things out of him. Just a little longer. That’s all.

* * *

Rita sets the tray down on the picnic table, shooing away a pair of katydids before she can crush them by accident. They’re some of the few bugs she actually doesn’t mind. “I don’t suppose I can interest you in a mint julep?”

Niles sighs loudly and reaches back to take the glass of water she brought over for him instead while she takes her own drink and sits down next to him. She brought a whole rotisserie chicken out too, just in case. At least her need to be near - constantly eating doesn’t seem to bother Niles as much as many of her other, ah,  _ behaviors  _ did. In fact, he seemed downright fascinated with it. “You know I don’t like drinking alcohol, Rita.”

Rita shrugs and takes a sip of her julep. The sun feels nice on her shoulders. Nice enough that she can almost forget the visit to the Pentagon. But that’s a pretty big  _ almost. _ “Can’t hurt to ask.” She glances at him sideways. “Have you made any progress on Captain Trainor’s location?”

“No. There was little of interest in his file.” And little that he didn’t already know, not that he was going to tell Rita that. Having her assist his investigation was very helpful, but she didn’t need to know any more than she had to. “The file on his cellmate, one Flex Mentallo, on the other hand, proved to be much more illuminating.”

Rita frowns. That name sounds strangely familiar. It makes her remember being a little girl, bored at the supermarket or during particularly long services at Sherith Israel or while left alone while her father worked and her mother ran errands. It’s probably nothing. A lot of odd little things remind her of her childhood. This is probably just one of those. It’s not worth thinking about, is it? It’s not like she  _ knew  _ anybody who went by a peculiar name like that.

“What did you find out about him?” She asks instead of voicing any of the myriad of thoughts running through her head. “Do you have any ideas about where they might have gone?” Something worrying occurs to her. “How do you know they didn’t split up? If this… Mr. Mentallo thought that the Captain was a liability, he could have just abandoned him.”

“I find that highly unlikely. Mr. Mentallo was apparently active in Kansas as something of a neighborhood superhero. I doubt he’d abandon someone he thought needed his help.” Niles drank some more of his water. “However, the file I managed to obtain mentioned that one of his ‘known allies’ is a being known as Danny the Street, who happens to be a friend of mine. If they haven’t already been found by Mr. Mentallo and Captain Trainor, I should be able to contact them and enlist their help to look for them.”

“Danny the  _ Street?”  _ Rita echoes, confused. What the hell kind of nickname is that? “That’s a… strange name. Why would you want someone to call you  _ that?” _

“Danny is a type of metamorph. They transform into inanimate inorganic objects and locations, though I’ve personally only ever known them as a street or an alley. They’ve been watching over an object of grave importance to me for well over two decades now. They’re a good soul, and I believe they’ll be able to help us find the Captain.” Niles turns his shoulders and rests his hand on Rita’s upper arm. “You’ve done enough. You don’t have to come with me to talk to them.”

Rita pushes down her reservations as well as the nausea that creeps up in her throat at the memory of what their visit to the Pentagon was like. “I came with you to the Pentagon, this will be nothing in comparison. I said I’d help you find this man, and I  _ will.  _ God knows what would have happened to me if you hadn’t contacted me. I might have ended up with those madmen too. I have to keep helping you look for him.”

Niles gives her arm a small squeeze. “You’re a good person and a good friend, Rita. I’m sure that when we find him, he’ll be happy to have you as one.”

As much as she might disagree with the sentiment, Rita was never one to turn down a compliment. And Niles, well… he doesn’t have to know every reason why he’s wrong about her being a good friend. Or a good person, period. He knows about some of the leadup to her accepting the role in  _ Forbidden Congo  _ and that’s all he needs to know. And when it comes down to it, a compliment is a compliment, no matter if it’s false. Or at least that’s the sentiment she’s always lived by.

Still, maybe when they  _ do _ find Captain Trainor (and possibly his friend Mr. Mentallo, too), because they’re most certainly going to, it’ll be a small chance for her to… not redeem herself. That’s not how that works. But it might be a chance to be a good friend to someone for once. Without getting anything out of the deal the way she does through her relationship with Niles. 

If she’s lucky.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ **CW:** this chapter contains self-hatred/blame, emotional abuse/manipulation, internalized homophobia, misgendering, and dehumanization.]

“I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to leave your room,” Flex says happily. For once, Larry doesn’t have the mental capacity to be annoyed with him. Or to feel anything except exhausted and honestly kind of thirsty. “Your jacket looks very nice on you.”

There’s a whistle and the window decal behind Flex rearranges to say  _ I agree. World War I chic makes you look particularly handsome. _

“Thanks,” Larry manages to say. Thank god Keeg isn’t trying to sabotage  _ this  _ too, even though Larry certainly wouldn’t put it past hir. “Hey, Flex, where’s Dolores?”

“Oh, she’s out on a date!” Flex says brightly. “There’s a nice woman who runs the bakery down the street, the two of them decided to go out the first time she met Danny and everyone else. But they never got the chance to until today. They’ll probably be out together all day, so I decided to hang out with you.”

Larry’s breath hitches in his throat. There’s a chance, a slim chance, that Flex  _ isn’t  _ talking about a meeting like the one Sheryl used to have with her sister and their friends. There’s a chance he doesn’t just mean what Larry wants it to mean. And that’s a terrifying chance. A truly terrifying chance. 

Seemingly oblivious to Larry’s sudden near-heart attack, Flex claps him on the shoulder (which  _ really  _ hurts) and beams at him. “I thought we could grab breakfast together. Danny’s stopped here to meet up with a friend, they said that there’s a small town not too far from here we could visit if we wanted. Unless you didn’t feel up for going somewhere off them.”

Larry tries to swallow away his anxious upset stomach and blink away his dizziness. It’s nothing. It has to be nothing. Girls do that kind of thing all the time. So do boys. They just hang out and chat. It’s nothing. That’s what Flex means, not anything else. “Uh, yeah. I’d rather stay with them for now. Sorry, Flex.”

“That’s fine! Come on, there’s a nice spot we can go for breakfast without bothering Dolores and Singrid.” Flex leads him down the street, and Larry allows himself to be dragged by him up to a sweet little café with a red and white striped overhang. Yeah, this may be the last thing he wants to do right now. But he also ate all of his sandwiches before he finally fell asleep and woke up with the sun streaming through his window, and at least Flex can be trusted to deliver food.

So Larry allows himself to be plunked down at one of the outdoor tables and lets Flex bring over a menu for both of them. He lets him point out what sounds good and what Danny recommends while Larry watches a tall man across the street offer his arm to a laughing shorter man with his heart in his throat. He nods at the right times and allows Flex pick out what he wants to pick out for him and he convinces himself that everything is fine.

“You’ll probably have to take your omelette back to your room to eat it,” Flex says thoughtfully. “But you can drink the smoothie now just like you had the milkshake yesterday. I’ll go inside and order for us. You just wait out here, okay?” He stands and goes in, leaving Larry alone outside to watch the people passing by and pretend that he  _ isn’t  _ actually looking at them.

_ Flex really likes you, you know,  _ Danny comments, arranging letters on the drinks menu that Flex left outside—most likely for the exact purpose of talking to Danny, now that Larry thinks about it.  _ It’s cute. _

“I think Flex really likes  _ everyone,”  _ Larry says wryly. He squeezes his hands together. At least everyone here is so used to talking to Danny that they don’t give someone having a conversation with a menu a second look. “To be honest, I’m surprised he didn’t try to befriend anyone at the Bureau of Normalcy.”

_ Don’t pretend you don’t like him too.  _ Somehow, Danny’s words feel teasing.  _ I think it’s sweet. Most people find him a bit  _ too _ odd. _

“He  _ is  _ weird, but he’s okay,” Larry acknowledges. Alright, maybe he thinks Flex is more than okay. He’s still annoying in how over-the-top friendly he is, but he’s definitely grown on Larry since he first refused to help him escape back at the Bureau under the Pentagon. “He’s a nice guy.”

There’s another one of those faint hum-whistles, like Danny’s laughing at him from somewhere nearby.  _ Yes, he most definitely is. _

“Ordered!” Flex himself says cheerfully as he sits back down across from Larry. Danny immediately erases all traces of their presence from the table, and even though Larry can’t see or hear them anymore, it almost feels like they’re winking at him. “Sorry it took so long.” 

“It’s fine.” Larry’s throat hurts, so he doesn’t say anything until the waitress brings him his smoothie and he’s drunk almost half of it. Flex watches him the whole time. It’s a little unnerving. The way he tilts his head and studies him while hardly blinking. It’s weird. Though maybe it’s not any weirder than anything else he’s done.

“You still want to go back to the Bureau of Normalcy, don’t you?” Flex asks suddenly, and Larry freezes. When he doesn’t respond in time, Flex frowns a little and keeps going. “You want to go back, and I wish you’d tell me why. Because it’s great here! Everyone is so nice, and Danny can protect everybody. At the Bureau they just… hurt you. Why do you want to go back?”

Larry just stares at him. How can Flex  _ not  _ understand? He’s seen that thing inside of Larry. He’s seen what a monster ze is. He’s spoken to hir, communicated with hir, in a way that even Larry hasn’t. How can he not understand that there’s nobody here who has treated him the way he deserves to be treated? As a monster just like that thing is?

Flex shakes his head a little. “Keeg says that you think you deserve it. Because of what ze did and because of what you think you did. Ze says that you think you’re both monsters. But you’re  _ not,  _ Larry. I know you’re not. Neither of you are. I promise.”

Something hot and angry curls in Larry’s gut and he leans forward. “You don’t know  _ anything  _ about me. Or about that thing. You think you do, because you took us from the Bureau, but you  _ don’t.  _ You really don’t. You don’t know about the lives I’ve ruined or the people I’ve hurt. You don’t know how that thing treats me almost every time I close my eyes. How ze makes me see the people I’ve hurt—”

“I’ve spoken to hir! Keeg says that ze’s just trying to help you!” Flex reaches out and rests his hand on Larry’s.  _ “We _ just want to help you.”

“Well maybe you should stop,” Larry snaps, yanking his hand away. Flex looks hurt. Good. He needs to get used to shit like this. Larry’s not like him. Everything with Dolores turned out just the way Flex had wanted it to. They’d escaped from the Bureau of Normalcy, they’d made it to Danny unscathed,  _ someone  _ had found at least a short-term solution to Larry’s radiation problem… It had all gone according to Flex’s plan. Larry wasn’t  _ like that.  _ Everything he touched was  _ ruined.  _ His career, his precarious balance with Sheryl and John. It had all gone up in smoke. Flex just doesn’t understand. And obviously neither does Keeg.

Flex shakes his head. “We’re not going to stop, Larry.  _ I’m  _ not going to, and I don’t think Keeg  _ can.  _ Ze’s bound to you, ze can’t just  _ stop caring  _ and leave you behind. Like…” He waves his huge hands. “Like a counterweight, or the other side of a scale. You’re bound. But even if you weren’t, hir core is too good to just leave you.”

Larry glares and really wishes that Flex could actually see it. “Ze ruined my fucking life! I’m entitled to feel however the hell I want about hir!” The buzzing in his ribcage suddenly flares back up again, but Larry ignores it. “You don’t get to tell me how I have to feel about my own fucking life! You don’t know anything about me!” He stands up, not noticing that Flex is looking just past him, suddenly seeming confused. “I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to do, but I need you to leave me the  _ hell—” _

He turns around and faces a man he’s never seen before and a woman who can’t possibly be who he thinks she is.

“Hello,” the man says, extending a hand for Larry to shake. He doesn’t take it. It feels like Keeg is going to start trying to force hir way out of his ribs the hard way. Larry half wants to see hir try. It can’t be more painful than anything else he’s been through. “My name is Dr. Niles Caulder, and this is my associate Rita Farr. I’m sorry, Captain Trainor, but I’m afraid I need to speak with you rather urgently.”

* * *

Apparently, the place Larry’s staying at above the flower shop also has an attached sitting room, which Larry didn’t know until Danny directed him, Dr. Caulder (who greeted them like they were an old friend, and maybe they were), and Rita goddamn Farr, whose movies Sheryl had adored, to it. The entire time they were awkwardly heading there, Keeg made sounds like a sputtering electric motor in his chest, none of which Dr. Caulder or Ms. Farr seemed to hear, even though they made Larry want to punch himself hard in the gut to make the thing in there shut the hell up.

So now they’re sitting, still awkward and tense, above the flower shop, Larry squeezing his knees as tightly as he can and Ms. Farr nervously playing with her hair and looking back and forth between him and Dr. Caulder every few seconds.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” Dr. Caulder says finally. “I believe that you’re in severe danger. Danny has done an excellent job sheltering you, and I’m sure you’re very grateful to Mr. Mentallo for rescuing you, but your needs simply can’t be met here. I have experience in assisting people with strange and usual conditions.” He nods to Rita, who flushes and looks at the floor, nervously hiding her hands behind her back. “I’d like to offer you a place to stay in my home where you could be fully accommodated for.”

A magazine sitting on the coffee table rearranged its title as Danny offered their own insight.  _ I don’t mean to eavesdrop or interfere,  _ they say,  _ but I’ve been friends with Dr. Caulder for a long time. He’s a brilliant scientist and I’m sure he could provide for you. You don’t have to leave, we’d love to have you here, but if you decide to go with him, you’ll be in excellent hands. _

“Thank you, Danny,” Dr. Caulder says graciously. “Captain Trainor, the choice is yours, but you don’t have to make it right this second. Though, I will say…” He sighs. “I hesitate to tell you this, because I don’t want it to influence your decision at all, but I’m afraid that the Bureau of Normalcy will come after you for escaping before long. I managed to obtain the file they kept on you, and you seemed to prove to be a very valuable asset to them. Of course, the danger from them will be present if you decide to come live at my manor, but Danny and their citizens would no longer be at risk.”

Larry tries to collect his thoughts. It’s all just… so much information.  _ Too  _ much information. Why the hell is everyone always trying to  _ help  _ him, huh? Why can’t they just leave him in peace? Cut the damn stowaway out of him and leave him to rot alone? He wants to get out of here, away from this amazing place with its acceptance and love and stupid fucking Flex Mentallo, but hearing that the Bureau of Normalcy is more likely to find him here damn near makes him want to stay. He  _ deserves  _ to go back there. He  _ deserves  _ for them to catch him again.

But… even if  _ he  _ deserves it… even if  _ Keeg  _ deserves it, too… does everybody else? Danny doesn’t. Christ, Danny doesn’t deserve  _ any _ of this, as much of an abnormality as they may be. Danny doesn’t deserve for Larry to be there and bring all his goddamn problems with him. Maybe Flex does, just for being so infuriatingly kind, but Dolores doesn’t even have any abilities, whatever the hell “muscle magic” was or otherwise. And the citizens he didn’t properly meet… the one running the shop where he got his jacket, the little girl who had run down the street with her glittering eyes… did they deserve for the Bureau to catch them and throw them in tiny cells and tear them apart for being freaks?

The answer was no. Of course the answer was no. They didn’t deserve to be tormented for being different. None of them did. Except for him. Because he’d ruined lives. None of the rest of them had. Flex and Dolores were happy together. Danny was happy. Everyone else who lived on them was happy. None of them knew what it felt like to hurt like he did, except maybe for Danny, for being what they were—not a man or a woman and not quite  _ both,  _ either, and a  _ fucking talking teleporting street  _ to boot. But Danny hadn’t let that tear apart someone’s life. Danny wasn’t a  _ degenerate.  _ Danny hadn’t killed the people he’d loved, or at least sealed their fate to be one full of suffering.

If Flex were there, he’d probably say something about how Larry hadn’t ruined anyone’s life. Maybe he’d finally realize that it was all Keeg’s fault for crashing into it and shattering his happy illusion into a million shining pieces. Or maybe he wouldn’t—he seemed to like Keeg much more than he liked Larry, anyhow. He’d probably be happy Larry was gone. Maybe this doctor could find a way to pull hir out of him permanently, and then he’d be able to let Larry die in peace (because he’d never be able to go back to his old life, if John wasn’t dead from pulling him from the wreckage then he’d never want Larry again, and Sheryl had made it clear that she never wanted Larry near her or the boys), content in the knowledge that his goddamn motherfucking passenger was free to go wherever the hell it wanted.

God, he wanted that. More than anything else, he wanted that. The freedom to just lay down and die and never have to deal with the perverse feelings inside him again. Maybe—much as he didn’t want to think about it, because it wasn’t polite to think so badly of people who had helped him—being with Danny had been making him worse. Making him want to accept himself for the monster he knew he was instead of working to better himself. Cure his disease. 

“Can you fix me?” He asks, voice hollow. He looks at Rita. He’d heard about her mental breakdown. Sheryl had told him about it. Keeg hums like a hornet in between his lungs. Larry automatically thumps his fist against his chest, right at the center of the spreading blue glow. “Can he fix me? Did he fix you?”

“Niles is helping me manage my condition,” she says delicately after receiving a brief nod from Dr. Caulder. Like he’s mentally telling her what to say. That’s a little weird. But not enough to think about for more than a second’s observation. “It’s not  _ cured  _ yet, but… he’s optimistic. I mean,  _ we’re  _ optimistic. I look like a regular member of society now and I can be seen in public.” She smiles. It looks strained. “Trust me. Niles knows what he’s doing. He’s the most brilliant man I’ve ever met.”

“Thank you, Rita.” Niles holds out his hand to Larry. “I won’t know if I can cure you until I get a proper look at you,” he says. “But I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to help you become normal again. And if I succeed, hopefully you’ll be able to return to society once again. Unfortunately, we only have a day or so for you to deliberate on whether you want to come with us, as I have experiments that need tending to.”

Larry looks around. At the picturesque street outside the window. At the cheerful pink and green furnishings of everything in the sitting room. He wonders if Flex is outside, worried about him—or probably more accurately, worried about how Keeg’s doing inside of him—and wondering what they’re talking about. If Danny’s still listening. If the Bureau are headed their way right now, ready to take him back to the Ant Farm and crush the sickness out of him. He makes his choice.

He takes Dr. Caulder’s hand. “No. I don’t need to wait any longer to decide. I’m coming with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for the "World War I chic" line goes to Keith Giffen.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one more to go after this...
> 
> [ **CW:** this chapter contains internalized homophobia, dehumanization, threats of violence and murder, and implications of past torture.]

Dr. Caulder’s house is… big. When he’d called it a  _ manor,  _ Larry hadn’t been expecting it to be so…  _ grandiose.  _ It’s perched on a hill not far from a small town that’s hardly more than a collection of buildings grouped together, connected by some patches of trees. Rita gave him the full tour when he arrived, showing him everything from his future bedroom and bathroom, which had already been attached to a decontamination chamber, to the beginnings of the garden outside near a rusted greenhouse to her own bedroom, which was decorated with pictures and posters of her own face. Larry had been nervous when she’d showed him her room, but she hadn’t so much as winked at him, so hopefully it was meant without a hint of flirtation on her part.

Dr. Caulder had presented him with new bandages the second he’d arrived, telling him that while the ones Danny had provided were adequate, his were better. And he was the scientist, so Larry had agreed, spending a full hour trying to get comfortable in the new ones because even though they were supposedly more well-designed, the old ones had felt much better on his skin. At least he’d gotten to keep the goggles. And he barely takes off the cozy green coat.

(It’s a bit of an understatement to say the new ones aren’t as nice to wear. The new ones scratch and prickle and they feel too heavy. Like they’re trapping him in his own body with Keeg. The ones he’d gotten on Danny had felt freeing. They let him talk to people and go outside and… and feel normal again. Just a little bit. These ones aren’t anything like that. But he supposes these ones are closer to what he deserves. It just makes being trapped in a personal hell a bit more physical.)

He doesn’t mind it, really. And the peace and quiet is a nice change of pace from the constant hustle and bustle of Danny and their citizens. Rita’s nice, but she isn’t constantly trying to talk to him like Flex had. He sees her when they occasionally collaborate on making dinner, since Larry’s not a half bad cook when he actually puts the effort in and Rita says that cooking is normal for lots of women and she’s supposed to get back to being normal so her body follows suit, but they typically eat in separate rooms since he can only have liquids through a straw without putting her in danger of getting irradiated by taking off his bandages. 

Honestly, he sees Dr. Caulder much more often than he sees her, and that was just because he is  _ constantly _ trying to inspect him every second of every day. It reminds him of how the Bureau of Normalcy had talked about him and poked and prodded at him, promises of how he would one day be cured of his curse and all. That was okay, though. Larry  _ wants  _ a cure. (Rita says she does, too, every time he asks, but each time she tells him that it sounds less and less true.) The examinations weren’t as bad as the interviews, where Dr. Caulder taped him and tried to talk to him about his condition—or worse, tried to talk to Keeg. Larry usually ends up storming out of those sessions.

However, he does wish, a little, that Flex had told him how to talk to hir. Not because he has anything nice to say, but because he wants to hear why ze chose  _ him  _ to ruin. Why it was  _ his  _ life that got destroyed. How ze looked inside him and saw his sickness and selected him as the one to be subject to an eternity of torture. Even the people he saw every day couldn’t figure it out because he was so careful with it. How could some  _ parasite  _ see it?

It’s that wish that lets him stay in those endless sessions with Dr. Caulder for just a fraction longer than he would have otherwise. He hates that he tries to talk to Keeg. He knows he’s not going to be successful because the only one who ever spoke to Keeg was Flex. But is it so wrong to demand answers? He can’t exactly blame Dr. Caulder for wanting them, even if he hates it.

At least talking about his condition is not  _ quite _ as bad as when Dr. Caulder asks him about Sheryl, who he doesn’t even want to fucking  _ think  _ about because of how badly he fucked up her life. How badly he must’ve fucked up the lives of his boys. But it  _ is  _ just as bad as the few times that Dr. Caulder has asked him about John. Even if it was never with anything in his voice that made Larry think he  _ knew  _ about what John meant to him— _ why  _ John meant to him—it still felt horrible.

(One upside—maybe the  _ only  _ upside to being constantly interviewed—is that Dr. Caulder doesn’t ask him about his experience on Danny the Street. He doesn’t ask him about Flex or Dolores or Danny themselves or any of the other citizens that he had random encounters with. That was good, right? That meant he didn’t have to think about them. Or Flex. Or Danny, and why he felt so safe on them. Or Flex.)

Sometimes in moments of something that might be considered weakness he contemplates asking if he can write a letter to Sheryl to ask her about the boys. But what would be the point? He’ll never be able to convince her that he’s sorry. He’ll never be able to apologize enough for destroying her life with his own sickness. And the boys… they were better off if they thought Larry had died. Larry  _ wishes  _ he had just died. He has for a long time. So he can’t put this on them. He just can’t. They don’t deserve it.

(In moments of something that he  _ knows  _ is weakness, he considers writing to John, too.)

The closest he gets to a happy ending is within the nightmares Keeg—Dr. Caulder calls hir “the Negative Spirit” and Larry can’t be bothered to tell him hir real name. It’s not like it matters, anyway—gives him every time he lets his guard down enough for hir to come rushing out of his chest. 

That’s the closest he gets to seeing John.

On the surface, they don’t feel like nightmares. Fragments of John reaching out to Larry and trying to talk to him, begging him to tell him what’s going on and where he is and if he’s okay, while Larry backs away and tries not to think about his skin bubbling and his lips bleeding from radiation seeping into his flesh. John never looks sick in the dreams. He looks like he always did, just more worried. So he looks the way he did the last time Larry saw him. The dreams just make Larry want to get the damn spirit out of him all the more.

And somehow it’s only been two and a half weeks.

That’s most of what Larry remembers about it, later. That even though it felt like an endless monotone of events that blurred into each other, it wasn’t even very long. Not even a month. Three weeks. Because that’s when it happens. Right on the three week mark, like it was following some sort of schedule. (Ha. The  _ as if  _ factor is funny in retrospect.)

He’s eating breakfast when it happens. Well, kind of. He’s actually just drinking one of Dr. Caulder’s protein mixes through a straw and watching Rita eat her weight in strawberry waffles, but it counts to an extent. Nothing feels like it’s going to go wrong. There’s an aura of  _ off- _ ness that lingers over the entire house, but Larry figures that he probably just needs to get used to it. 

The house is so big and Rita’s eating so loudly across from him that he doesn’t hear the knock on the door, or the sound of Niles going to answer it. Neither does Rita, and she keeps destroying her waffles. Both of them, however, hear Niles’ loud shout from the front hallway, and the sound of a gun firing. 

Rita jumps to her feet, eyes wide, at almost the exact same time Larry does, but unlike Larry she immediately moves to head toward the front hall in the direction the sounds came from.

Larry grabs her arm before he even registers he’s moving. “Don’t.”

“Niles could be hurt!” Rita objects, yanking away from him as the left half of her face slides downward. Her lower left leg does the same thing under her skirt. “He needs our help, he—”

“Niles would want us to run,” Larry says firmly. He knows that to be true, even if he hasn’t known the man nearly as long as she has. Rita flinches at the use of the past tense, biting her lower lip. Larry doesn’t want to consider Niles is dead, but they have to act like he’s not there. They have to  _ run.  _ “Whatever’s going on, we need to  _ go.” _

He takes her arm again and starts directing her toward the other door to the kitchen. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but his mind is jumping to all the worst possibilities. Terrorists from the Soviet Union looking for weapons to exploit, people looking to hurt Rita, someone there to murder them, someone who had just been trying to rob a nice mansion they’d seen from the little town just starting to spring up nearby and hadn’t expected anyone to be home…

There’s an agitated spluttering of static from his chest that he’s pretty sure only he can hear. Keeg must be glowing through, because Rita bites her lip and looks anywhere but at the center of his chest. Larry presses his knuckles to his sternum.

“We need to go,” he repeats, pulling on her again. Now she’s looking back at the doorway to the kitchen that’s behind them, face pale and eyes wide. “Niles wouldn’t want us to get hurt.”

“Captain Trainor,” a measured voice says. “I would suggest you surrender.”

As Larry turns around to face Forsythe, the ringing in his ears sounds less like it’s a figment of his anxious imagination and more like it’s coming from the space inside his ribcage. 

The first thing he notices is that the gun in his hand isn’t pointed at Larry. Instead, it’s aimed right between Rita’s eyes. The second thing he notices is Forsythe’s wide, easy smile. And the third thing is the group of men behind him, all of them visibly armed, two of them holding Dr. Caulder up between them. 

He looks mostly unharmed. No blood, at least not that Larry can see, but it could just be hidden under his clothes. The Bureau of Normalcy doesn’t fire warning shots. Whoever pulled the trigger had to have known what they were doing, and Niles couldn’t have been a difficult target in an empty front hall...

“You’re the one we want, Trainor,” Forsythe says, advancing a few steps. He’s still aiming his gun in Rita’s direction. “The actress… she doesn’t have to be a part of this.”

_ Rita.  _ They’d love to get their hands on Rita if they knew what she was capable of, Larry realizes. And she’s… she’s not like him. (At least not as far as he knows.) She hasn’t ruined anyone’s life. (At least not that he knows of.) Rita’s not his  _ friend,  _ exactly, but she could become it. Or she could have if the Bureau would have given the two of them the chance.

There’s an almost-furious screeching that suddenly tears from his chest, and Larry’s vision starts dimming as he stumbles backward and the spirit within him starts to—

The bullet from Forsythe’s gun grazes the side of Rita’s head as she screams and claps her melting hands over her mouth, and Larry’s world snaps back into clarity.

“I recommend you comply.” Now he signals, and one of the men behind him lifts their own gun to Dr. Caulder’s temple. “You  _ and _ that monster inside you.”

They’re going to kill them. They’re going to kill Rita, who doesn’t have any part in this, who he barely even knows. They’re going to kill Dr. Caulder, who was just trying to help him. And maybe if the—if Keeg manages to get his body somewhere safe from them or  _ something  _ they’ll go out and find Danny and use  _ them  _ to make him come back or—or maybe they’ll catch Flex again, him and Dolores both, and—

“I surrender,” he says. His voice sounds far away to his own ears. “I’ll come back with you.”

This is what he wanted. This is what he was hoping for. He’d even tried to go back, when Flex had rescued—had taken him from the Ant Farm along with him when he’d escaped. This was the inevitability he’d known was on the horizon. This wasn’t—this was a  _ good thing.  _ They’d been trying to fix him when Flex had rescued—taken him.

This was what he had wanted. Wasn’t it?

* * *

Here are some facts about Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo.

Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo comes from the Negative Space, taken from hir home by a random act of chance that bound hir to Human Captain Lawrence Trainor forever. Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo does not trust Human Scientist Niles Caulder and believes there is something he is not telling Human Captain Lawrence Trainor. Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo does not want to go back to the Ant Farm. Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo does not want Human Actress Rita Farr to get hurt.

As ze circles and screeches inside Larry’s chest with a crackling sound that grows more aggressive by the second, ze cannot help but feel furious that all of these things seem to contradict each other. 

The human-thing who was in charge of torturing them at the Ant Farm beneath the human-shape has a gun to the back of Human Captain Lawrence Trainor’s neck. All three of them are aware that he won’t actually pull the trigger. He’s proven time and again that Human Captain Lawrence Trainor is much,  _ much  _ more valuable alive than dead. (“Death” is a relatively new concept for Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo. In the Negative Space, things never died. They ended and began again but they did not  _ die.)  _ The gun is merely to remind them that he is the one who holds the power.

Power. Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo wishes ze could use hir power. Ze wishes—

Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo wishes ze had Hero Flex Mentallo’s power.

Hero Flex Mentallo was the one who broke them out of the Ant Farm last time. Keeg had helped, yes. Ze had gotten those tangled humming wires off of him. But it had been Hero Flex Mentallo who destroyed the walls and carried Human Captain Lawrence Trainor through the forest for hours as Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo chirped and spun above them.

Yes. Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo wishes ze had Hero Flex Mentallo’s power.

The power of Hero Flex Mentallo and the safety of Street Danny the Street… that’s what they need. If only there was a way to call them. Human-things do not communicate in bursts of frequencies the way those of the Negative Space do. The only one who has ever understood hir speech was Hero Flex Mentallo, and he is far, far away.

…But there was one time when Hero Flex Mentallo communicated with sound, wasn’t there? When he called Street Danny the Street to them after he liberated them from the Ant Farm. To get Human Captain Lawrence Trainor and Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo and Hero Flex Mentallo himself to the safety of Street Danny the Street, he had used sound and called Street Danny the Street from across the human-space.

Yes. Yes. Ze remembers that. A frequency that meant  _ “help!”  _ or something close to it. At least to human-things like Street Danny the Street. 

Ze ripples, hir form-stuff arcing and curling inside of Human Captain Lawrence Trainor’s chest. Those of the Negative Space communicate primarily through frequencies and tones and other things that are seemingly incomprehensible to many of the human-things in the human-space. It is an easy feat to match a frequency. An easy feat to recreate it. An easy feat to reuse it.

Ze will try to call Street Danny the Street for help. Ze will try to save Human Captain Lawrence Trainor even though ze is not sure if Human Captain Lawrence Trainor would return the favor for hir. And ze will try to save Human Actress Rita Farr, too, because she lets them watch shifting images and sounds on the little box with her face inside it. Negative Spirit Keeg Bovo will get them all to safety. 

Yes. Ze will do this.

* * *

“You’re worried about Larry, aren’t you?” Dolores asks, licking her thumb and reaching up to wipe some ice cream off Flex’s cheek. It’s chocolate and vanilla swirl. His favorite. Nobody makes it quite like the ice cream shop on Danny does.

“A bit,” Flex admits. He sighs and rolls his shoulder back. The color of the leopard print on his shorts changes from standard to dark green, the same color as the jacket Larry had picked out. He frowns down at his own body before rolling the shoulder again. The color changes back and this time the motion has the intended result of causing a fresh napkin to appear in Dolores’ hand.

“You should go see him,” Dolores encourages. “At least write to him. He’s probably bored out of his mind, cooped up in an old house with just that scientist and Ms. Farr for company.” She kisses his cheek. “Maybe you could send him one of your poems.”

Flex turns dark red all over. He’s not ashamed of the fact that he writes poetry. It’s fun and it keeps his mind healthy! The brain is an important muscle to keep in shape! There’s nothing to be ashamed of there! It’s just that sending poetry to  _ Larry  _ would be a different thing than writing it. A different thing from showing it to Dolores, even. “Maybe some other time.”

Dolores giggles. Flex squeezes her hand. He knows she’s not laughing at him. It’s like they were made just for each other. Like someone made the two of them up out of clay so they could be in love. People always think it’s an act, too! Like just because they love other people they aren’t just as in love with each other. It’s silly. Just because other people can’t do it doesn’t mean  _ they  _ can’t. He’s Flex Mentallo, man of muscle mystery. He can do anything. Or… maybe not  _ anything.  _ But he can do whatever he wants.

And right now he wants to call Dr. Caulder and ask if he can talk to Larry.

Dolores gives him another kiss on the cheek and shoos him away to do just that, teasingly telling Danny not to bother him. Danny, for their part, connects the phone straight through to Dr. Caulder’s house on the first try, encouragingly resting the very end of a banner on Flex’s shoulder.

Nobody picks up.

That’s okay. That’s fine. They don’t know who’s calling them, for one, and even if they did, they would have no obligation to answer!  _ Larry  _ would have no obligation to answer! Larry doesn’t owe him anything! Setting boundaries is  _ good,  _ especially for someone like  _ that,  _ someone who’s had his body tortured and scrutinized under a microscope.

It still makes him feel nervous for a reason he can’t quite place.

Danny tries to reassure him. They can usually tell when someone’s feeling low. It’s sweet of them, really, but Flex has other things to worry about. He can’t afford to feel sad about no one picking up the phone. It doesn’t matter. There’s places to see! There’s people to help! There’s—

For a moment it’s like an earthquake has hit as Danny suddenly  _ shudders  _ in a way Flex has never seen or felt them do before.

“Hey, buddy, what’s wrong?” He asks worriedly as he steadies himself on a lamppost. “Did something happen?”

Danny’s ridden out earthquakes completely still and tranquil before. They always made sure the people living on them stayed safe and got through it unscathed. This isn’t their usual response to a natural disaster. All around, people are asking what’s wrong, some of them sticking their heads out of shops and others gently patting bushes or their door frames in an attempt at comforting their friend and host.

The phone falls off the receiver and Danny speaks loud and clear through it, strong enough to be heard by everyone outside.  _ “I’m going to jump. Hold on tight.” _

Flex obeys, curling his toes to lend Danny as much stability as he can. He can see Dolores hanging on to one of the legs holding up the awning of the store they’d brought Larry to when they’d gotten him his new jacket. He can tell she’s as confused as he is. Danny hasn’t done something like this before. They’ve jumped fast to get away from danger, but this is different. They’ve always been confident in their ability to escape. Now they just seem frightened.

But… now Flex realizes  _ he  _ can feel something, too. As Danny settles down in their new resting place, something in Flex’s mouth starts to taste like metal.

He extends his senses to try to find the source by flexing one of the muscles in his ears and runs into a wall of chaos. Someone shouting, the click of a gun, someone familiar relaying orders, the tickling static of  _ Keeg— _

Flex starts running.

Luckily, he can move the sparse trees and shrubs aside with his iliopsoas muscles without breaking his stride. He can hear several distinct voices— _ Larry, Dr. Caulder, Forsythe from the Bureau and a few others who sound familiar who must be the others who dealt with him, Ms. Farr— _ mingled with the sharp familiar crackling of Keeg.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess what happened.

The house looks stately, perched at the very top of the hill. Agents swarm around it like ants on honey, their shiny black helmets and goggles glistening like carapaces in the sun.

They got the jump on him when he was preoccupied with the poor little kitten. But he tore through their base like it was papier-mâché no matter how many people they sent after him. They can’t honestly think they can stand up to him now, can they?

The man with the gun pressed against Ms. Farr’s ribs goes flying backward first. Then the two holding one of Dr. Caulder’s arms each. Niles slumps to the ground when the hands holding him release, and as he sits up while rubbing his biceps where they were gripping them Flex tenses his tibialis anterior to relocate his wheelchair from inside the house (evidently the front hall) to the front lawn.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, Ms. Farr and Dr. Caulder,” Flex apologizes, easily deflecting the bullets sent toward him from the agents now running up the hill toward him. “I’ll make sure these men never bother you again.”

Ms. Farr stops asking Dr. Caulder if he’s okay to look up, eyes suddenly frantic. “Oh, god, I can’t believe I didn’t—they took Larry!”

Flex had already realized Larry wasn’t there, but the words still send an icy jet of panic through him as he teleports an agent’s rifle to a nice island in the Pacific Ocean.

Oh,  _ no.  _

Even if this is still what Larry wants, he can’t let him go back there. What those people were doing was horrific. And Larry’s—Larry doesn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that, but especially not him. No matter what he thought he’d done that was so terrible, no matter how he thought Keeg had ruined his life. Flex can’t let him go back to that.

“I’ll protect Niles,” Ms. Farr says. Her voice is shaking, but she picks up a loose stone from the front lawn and hefts it like a weapon anyway. “You—you should go help Larry. Unless—unless you can do that  _ thing  _ you just did to those weapons to us, too. If you can send us away.”

Flex smiles apologetically and curls his arm, turning the guns of several agents into a bouquet of tiger lilies. They’re Dolores’ favorite. “I can’t teleport people. I’m sorry. But if you go down the hill you should find Danny. They can protect you.”

It isn’t very heroic, but Flex still turns his back on them and starts running around the house the second they begin making their way downhill after Ms. Farr helps Dr. Caulder into his wheelchair, knocking agents aside like bowling pins all the while—or at least he would if there were more than two agents left who hadn’t sprinted for the hills. 

He knows Danny can protect Ms. Farr and Dr. Caulder. Since the agents are scattered, they don’t need his help to get to them, even if he’d like to give it to them. Honestly, he would. But he has to do something important first.

He has to find Larry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last time.
> 
> [ **CW:** this chapter contains betrayal, emotional abuse/manipulation, briefly implied past sexual assault, references to past torture, threats of gun violence, and implications of psychiatric abuse.]

Larry tries to breathe.

The bandages Dr. Caulder gave him are far more stifling after some exercise than they were initially, and they scrape at his raw skin enough to hurt him beyond the level he’s come to expect from an existence in this body. He’s too hot all over and his head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton.

Keeg’s humming sounds less like a frantic mosquito-pitched whine and more like the crashing of the tides. Larry curls his fingers and imagines hir hand—does ze have hands? He hasn’t… oh. He hasn’t actually seen hir up close before, has he? Only in that video they showed him of hir bursting through the mesh of the suit they forced him into and attacking the agents—taking his. A gesture of small comfort.

The gun against the back of his neck, pressed right into his brain stem, seems so very far away.

“Your compliance is appreciated, Captain Trainor.” Forsythe’s voice is cool and measured. “This won’t take long.”

Larry wants to sneer  _ you’re welcome  _ back at him, but all he can do is run his bandaged fingers through the piles of wet dead leaves around his knees. He can hear the agents behind Forsythe nervously shifting behind the two of them, all of them looking up the hill through the trees at something Larry can’t see with his head forced down.

Keeg’s humming is softer now. It’s almost reassuring. Because Larry’s looking down, he can see the glow, so bright it illuminates the foliage around him.

It takes a moment to distinguish the sound of footsteps running through the grove from Keeg’s anxious thrumming in his ears.

There’s only a second before the sound registers fully and the person causing it bursts through the trees, but that’s  _ just  _ long enough for Larry to wonder if it’s Rita. He hopes it’s not. Rita is—she’s got her condition, but she hasn’t destroyed people like he has. They may not  _ really  _ be friends but he doesn’t want them to hurt her. God knows if they already have, if there are two corpses at the top of the hill outside the manor and Larry’s just worrying about something that’s already happened and—

Flex bursts through the cluster of brambles just in front of him and stops.

Somehow, there isn’t a scratch on him, even though he’s dressed in his usual lack of clothing. He’s looking directly at Larry. Larry twitches his fingers up in a wave before he has time to think about it and tries not to cry with relief because if  _ anyone  _ can protect Rita and Dr. Caulder, it’s Flex. A pale blue light just  _ barely  _ reaches out of Larry’s sternum like Keeg’s waving, too.

“Back away from Captain Trainor.” Flex plants his hands on his hips. He’s precise enough that he can probably knock the little phalanx of them backward without hurting Larry, but the one in the lead has a gun to the back of Larry’s head. Flex can stop bullets. He knows he can. But one would barely have to leave the gun to kill Larry. The same goes for turning the gun into something else—well, actually, it’s just swapping the gun for something else, not a true transmutation, because that’s the best he can do in a hurry, but that doesn’t matter very much. Larry would still end up dead. And he can’t let that happen.

“Flex Mentallo, our missing 722, you are under arrest by the Bureau of Normalcy for your crimes of absurdity,” Forsythe announces.

“There’s no law against being absurd!” Flex shoots back proudly. “You’re all just too afraid to really live your lives.” He steps forward. Now he’s looking at Larry. The darkness of the goggles makes it impossible to tell if he’s looking back, but that’s okay. As long as he’s listening. “So you hurt other people. You hurt them and you try to convince them that something about them is wrong when there isn’t. No matter what they’ve done, the people you hurt aren’t  _ wrong.  _ They don’t need anyone to fix them.”

Forsythe scoffs. Keeg’s quieted down, the blinding glow fading away. Larry’s pretty sure it’s because ze wants him to hear this. Maybe because ze wants him to believe it. Like when Flex tried to convince him of it before. 

Flex spreads his arms wide. “So go ahead. Try and stop us. You’re never going to be able to get rid of everyone. All the people you think are  _ wrong  _ just for existing? We’ll always be here. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Forsythe snarls, angry, losing his cool in a way Larry has only seen him do once before—when he was trying to convince his superiors to let him weaponize Larry against the Soviets—and aims his gun at  _ Flex’s  _ head instead.

With a  _ pop,  _ the gun turns into a green carnation.

The sound echoes as the rest of them follow suit.

Larry never realized one day he’d be happy to see Flex’s blinding grin light up the world around them.

It doesn’t take much work from his pectoral muscles to throw the agents back against the trees. Some of them are already turning and running, not much for fighting without their guns to back them up. Flex smiles wider. Just like criminals to run from real justice.

Forsythe isn’t one of them, though. He stays standing, gripping onto his new carnation with shaking hands. He’s clearly far past the edge of composure. “You—you can’t do this.”

Flex takes another step forward. Larry realizes that he’s leveling his eyes at  _ him, _ not at Forsythe. “You don’t have to hurt people. You can change. Anyone can change, no matter what they think they’ve done.” Well, almost, anyway. But Flex is confident Larry is one of those people. “Maybe I— _ we _ could help you forgive yourself.”

Larry swallows, thickly, behind his suffocating bandages. He thinks about Niles, warm and welcoming but still controlling and promising that he knew best instead of listening to what Larry was ever actually trying to say. He thinks about Danny, loving and kind and accepting. He thinks about Rita, who could be his friend, who doesn’t deserve to live in fear of the Bureau of Normalcy, who’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

And he thinks about Flex, who saved him from the Ant Farm even when he didn’t want to be saved, and didn’t let him go back to be tortured. Flex, who brought him food and who along with Dolores took him to pick out a jacket so he could feel like a human being again. Flex, who tried to convince him that things would be okay. Flex, who told him Keeg’s name (and Larry can feel hir now, warming him from the inside like ze can read his thoughts, and  _ god  _ Larry isn’t sure if he can forgive hir now or ever but he’d like to believe they’re on the same side). Flex, who  _ came back for him. _ Like so few people in his life ever would. 

It’s difficult to see through the dark-tinted goggles when his eyes are filled with tears.

“You  _ and  _ Captain Trainor are property of the United States government,” Forsythe growls. He shakes Larry, a little, but Larry barely feels it, too focused on Flex and on the humming in his throat. He’s sure Keeg is glowing so loudly ze can be seen all the way back up the hill at the manor. “You’re both coming back to the Ant Farm.”

“We’re not going to let the Bureau of Normalcy hurt anyone ever again,” Flex says proudly. “Nobody deserves to be locked in a cage and tortured just for being different.”

_ “We?”  _ Forsythe scoffs.

“Why do you think I haven’t come over there and knocked your lights out?” Flex still sounds cheerful, even while staring down Larry’s worst nightmare. “I wanted to give my friend a chance.”

For once, Larry’s desperation to cling to consciousness as Keeg surges out of his body comes from something positive, as the desire to watch Forsythe get his comeuppance for the hell he’s inflicted on so many people—something Larry never thought he’d see or even would be something he wished for, considering how much of the pain he’d deserved—clings to the forefront of his brain.

At least he gets the satisfaction of watching Forsythe being hurled against a tree so hard the trunk cracks just before his vision switches black.

He doesn’t dream of John or Sheryl or the boys. At least not fully. Instead it’s snippets of warm words, gentle touches, laughter. An aunt or an uncle kissing his forehead. Paul showing him a paper airplane he built, words jumbled and lost to time. Gary offering him a little flower. John pointing at the distant sweeping murmuration of starling wings as the train rumbled by. Sheryl in high school, shoving him when he made a bad joke. Flex and Dolores and the coat around his shoulders. Rita mumbling lines from the movie playing on the TV across from them.

Larry’s mouth tastes like the best chocolate milkshake he’s ever had and he can smell lavender and carnations and feel the fabric of his coat like the bandages aren’t there—because they  _ aren’t,  _ not in this dream—and he lets himself relax even though it physically hurts.

It feels like an apology. One from Keeg, of course, because who else could it be from? Who else can see into his private thoughts like this? Who else can  _ show  _ him things? He’d thought all along that ze was trying to torture him with those visions of John and Sheryl. Maybe… maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe this had always been an attempt at a peace offering. A metaphorical olive branch Larry had refused to see as one.

He doesn’t know if he can accept that apology and forgive hir, not yet and maybe never for everything, but—he was already tearing his life in two. Sheryl was at her breaking point. John was leaving. There was no good option. Force himself to love Sheryl and rip himself and her and their sons to shreds. Be with John and potentially lose both their lives.

There’s still a lot that’s hir fault. A lot. Deaths that could only have been unintentional, he knows that part now, but happened all the same. Those doctors that had tried to help him hadn’t deserved that. The good men who had worked hard to construct the plane he’d crashed and burnt in didn’t deserve to see their hard work scrapped, even if they’d been the ones to put Larry and John in danger more times than he could count. Potentially hurting John by exposing him to radiation is another thing Larry doesn’t know if he can overcome. At least not now. That roadblock is too big to be traversed while lying on the dead leaves.

But maybe there are things he can forgive hir for, too. He knows there are. Things that were  _ his  _ fault, not hirs. Things that were Forsythe’s fault. The Bureau’s fault. Things neither of them can take the blame for.

The Bureau may still have been onto something when they called him a degenerate and strapped him down and clawed secrets Larry himself still doesn’t know out of his body— _ their  _ body—but—maybe—he—

The thought is like pulling teeth.

The shifting colors around him skip like a faulty record and meld briefly into Flex’s earnest face, sitting across from him on Danny the Street. His mouth doesn’t move, but Larry still hears the words.  _ Ze says that you think you’re both monsters. But you’re not, Larry. I know you’re not. Neither of you are. I promise. _

Not a monster. Maybe he can believe that. Maybe he can live like that. As someone who isn’t a monster. Someone who can… who can feel… 

Larry touches his chest as the scenery around him flickers from his childhood playground to the pickup with John as an owl crests the horizon to Danny’s storefronts to a forest laden with blackberries despite the fact that he knows this is a dream and this is one of the few times ze isn’t actually there inside him.

He breathes. In and out. In and out. In and out. It’d be in time with Keeg if ze was still there along with him.

Perhaps it’s just that Keeg is free of him, spiraling around Forsythe and what remains of his men in the small stand of trees ringing Niles’ mansion, but Larry feels  _ light. _

Waking up doesn’t feel sudden or upsetting. Not like it has before. Finally, Larry understands what people mean when they say sleeping makes them feel refreshed and ready to take on anything.

Unfortunately, when Larry sits up, eager to face a challenge, he instead accidentally bumps right into Flex’s face.

“He’s up!” Flex says happily. He pats Larry’s shoulders with both hands like he’s making sure he’s still there. “Keeg said everything was in working order.”

Rita is peering over his shoulder, biting her lip. “Larry? You didn’t just knock yourself out again, did you?”

Larry shakes his head and sits up more gingerly this time. He recognizes where he is now. It seems like whatever damage the Bureau may have done to the manor was minor enough to be imperceptible. At least in the sitting room where he’s been laid on the couch. “No, no, I’m awake. Rita, are you…? That shot didn’t…?”

The tiny smile that had appeared on Rita’s face when he’d spoken falters. “Oh. Yes, I’m fine. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix.” She glances over her shoulder at where Niles is. He’s rubbing the palm of his hand with his thumb, clearly deep in thought. Larry’s glad to see he’s mostly okay. Visibly, anyway. No bandages or blood or bruising, at least any that isn’t hidden by his clothes. “Niles is a little worse for wear, but he’s fine, too.”

Niles Caulder is not, in fact, fine. He is instead highly distressed. He’s aware he currently has no choice but to consider his ties with the Bureau of Normalcy (and perhaps even with the United States government altogether) completely and utterly severed. Which means his research cannot continue as planned. Which means harm will inevitably befall Dorothy when he’s no longer there to protect her. And that is something that cannot stand.

And it’s all the fault of this—this “Flex Mentallo,” isn’t it? He may be friends with Danny, the current protector of Dorothy’s life and safety, but that means nothing. It has to mean nothing. He’ll have to contact Danny about retrieving Dorothy from them anyway. She’ll never be safe out of his sight even on something as fantastical as Danny the Street as long as he remains unaffiliated with the Bureau. There’s little to be done about Mr. Mentallo, as evidently even the Bureau can’t stand against him, but—

Niles makes his decision.

There is only one way to get on the Bureau’s good graces. And while it would have been far more conductive to his research to allow those like Rita and Captain Trainor to flourish in his home far from prying eyes, a more controlled and sterile setting will have to suffice. And on top of all of that, there’s a headache starting to bloom behind his eyes and he can still feel where Forsythe’s men gripped his arms too tightly despite their orders to be careful with him.

Ah, well. There will be time to deal with his physical aches and pains later, once these particularly irritating problems are taken care of. Poor, sweet Rita isn’t going to do very well in a place like the Ant Farm. She’s looking at him now, all concern and respect and trust. It’s such a shame he has to betray that.

Niles sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose and leans forward. “I’m terribly sorry,” he says quietly, "but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Mr. Mentallo. I’m exceptionally grateful for everything you’ve done for us today, and I don’t know what we would have done without you, but I’d like to give us all a chance to recover in peace.”

“But the Bureau could come back,” Flex objects. His hand is creeping closer to Larry’s. “They have more men they could send after you. It’s a factory down there. I want to keep you safe.”

“I understand that.” Niles shifts a little. Rita nervously tangles her fingers in her hair. She’s certain she’s not imagining it—Niles is  _ angry.  _ He’s trying to hide it for some reason, but he is. Why? Surely he’s angry at those Bureau of Normalcy goons for trying to kidnap or kill all of them. Why hide that when it was what they were all feeling? “But now that we know they’re still after Captain Trainor, we’ll be better prepared. I promise you, we can take care of ourselves.”

“Why not come to Danny?” Flex persists. Usually he’d give. He can be stubborn when he wants to, but he prefers making people happy to getting his own way, and it’s clear leaving will make Dr. Caulder happy. But  _ obviously  _ he can’t do  _ that,  _ can he? “I’m sure they’d love to take care of you. It’s safe there.”

Niles grits his teeth. “Really, Mr. Mentallo, I have to insist—”

“Why don’t I accompany you back to your room?” Rita interrupts. The thought of offering that makes her chest feel tight even though she knows it’s perfectly innocent. She hates that leftover response. Niles has proven he wouldn’t do something with that. Like that. She’s been over this with herself. It doesn’t change the fear. Even when she’s the one making the offer. “We’ve all had a long day.”

Niles looks like he’s going to argue. He still looks angry. It  _ does  _ scare her, some, to know that she’s going to go with him upstairs by herself when he’s upset. But that can’t matter right now. Fortunately, something changes in his brain and his face relaxes back into an impassive mask. “...Of course, Rita.”

“Here, Larry,” Flex says. “Do you want to go back to  _ your  _ room? I’ll help—”

Larry shoots upright in a sudden burst of adrenaline when Keeg makes a sound like metal on metal in his ears and lashes out in the direction his senses are telling him to because he can suddenly  _ see  _ what’s going to happen, piecing together data from a hundred scattered images and a sudden realization of what just might have happened to bring the Bureau to their doorstep.

The solid punch to the back of Niles’ head knocks him out cold.

Rita shrieks in surprise and immediately rounds on him—

The notebook clearly embossed with the symbol of the Bureau of Normalcy that falls out of Niles’ coat makes a much softer sound when it hits the floor than the gun Keeg and Larry both caught a glimpse of does.

Keeg makes a sound like a tuning fork inside Larry’s heart.

For a moment they all just stare at it. Rita at the gun. Flex and Larry at the journal.

“He must have stolen it from them,” Rita says faintly. “He’s going to be so angry when he wakes up.” She shakes herself and moves like she’s going to try to rouse Niles, and Larry automatically grabs her arm in the same place he did before, when the Bureau invaded their home. No, not their home. Just a place they were staying. A place that could never have been safe. “Let go of me!”

“He’s with them,” Larry says quietly. It’s all fitting together now. Why the Bureau came to the manor so perfectly on time. Why Dr. Caulder was manhandled but never seemed truly injured. How they knew where they were in the house so quickly, before they’d even had the chance to run. “He’s been with them all along.”

“Niles is a good man,” Rita says, voice shaking. “You didn’t—you don’t know him! You don’t know him like I do! He’s trying to help us! He’s going to be so  _ angry  _ when he wakes up, do you—” Her voice cracks again, and this time she doesn’t speak for a long moment as she gazes at where Niles is slumped over. “Do you know what he’s like?” Her voice is quiet and it shakes. “When he’s angry? You don’t… you shouldn’t…”

It makes too much sense. How he was able to get them to the Ant Farm. How he knew that agent, Forsythe’s, name. How he was able to smuggle those files out without them noticing. Why the Bureau came after them again even though Rita had  _ been there  _ when he’d promised over and over again that he was going to keep Larry safe. It makes too much sense, but she can’t consider the possibility that he was hurting… Larry. Just Larry. He was only ever going to give  _ him _ over to the Bureau, if—if all this ludicrousness was true, which she didn’t think it  _ was  _ because it  _ couldn’t  _ have been true. Not her. He wouldn’t have… he wouldn’t… that gun was… he  _ wouldn’t…  _

Unbidden, the ghost of words she’d almost completely forgotten about comes back to her. What those other agents had said when Niles had left her alone with them in the Ant Farm.

_ “So you’re  _ the  _ Rita Farr, huh? We’ve all heard a lot about you.” _

_ “It's always good to get a chance to meet the merchandise beforehand.” _

Rita can’t even cover her mouth properly as she melts for what must be the hundredth time that day, trying to force her breathing level and trying to stop the vomit from crawling its way out of her mouth. She barely manages to whisper  _ “Oh, god.” _

Perhaps Flex recovers first because he never really knew Niles at all. “We have to get to Danny.”

“We couldn’t find them when we went to hide on them from the Bureau earlier,” Rita says. It’s muffled by the sounds of her accidentally spreading across the floor. She’s failing in her effort not to cry. “Niles said—he said they must have jumped to protect themselves and their citizens from the Bureau.”

“I can take you to them.” Flex offers his hand to Rita, the other one coming to rest at the center of Larry’s chest. Keeg’s glow rises to meet it. So does one of Larry’s hands. His brain is a soundtrack of confusion and betrayal, but not quite to the same degree as Rita’s. “If they really ran, I can call them back. Or Keeg can, ze did a fine job of it when ze had to get me here.”

Rita struggles to accept his offer, hands shifting every which way. Her body  _ hurts,  _ more than it has in a long time, the stress making the breakdown all the worse. She wants to scream and run and pull her hair and prickle it against her face and hide somewhere quiet and cry until she can’t breathe and she  _ can’t.  _ It’s like her brain is short circuiting.

Niles twitches on the floor, and Flex’s comforting aura falters. “Here, Keeg, you call Danny and go outside with Larry. I don’t think we can make it to where I left them. Ms. Farr, I can carry you if you’d like? It’s okay if you don’t, we’ve just gotta get a move on—”

Rita finally manages to grab into his arm. She has to make him understand. Or at least try to. “You—he was the only one. He was the only one who wanted me after I turned into this. He—he told me he could help me, that he could make me normal, he introduced me to Steve and he—he—he—”

She’s practically hyperventilating. She’d thought she was good at reading people. She’d thought she could tell what Niles was feeling. But he was  _ lying  _ to her. She’d been living next to someone who wanted to hurt her and she hadn’t even realized and how many times was she supposed to go  _ through  _ something like this before whatever was up above was satisfied with the amount she’d suffered and given up for everything she’d done?

Why couldn’t there be  _ one  _ good thing?

“I know,” Flex says softly. Gently. Larry still hasn’t gone outside, though judging by the gentle tremor that shakes the hill beneath them, Keeg’s done a good job of calling Danny up to the house regardless. “But we want you. I’d like to get to know you better. I’m sure Larry would too. Even though he’s been living here with you, there's always more to learn. There’s a place with Danny for everyone, no matter who you are.”

Rita wants to scream and ask how she’s supposed to ever trust someone again.

She doesn’t, though.

She just looks up at Larry and takes a deep breath and asks if he’d be alright with carrying her outside.

They don’t force her to explain that he’s more trustworthy because he’s been around her for three weeks and hasn’t tried anything while she’s only met Mr. Flex Mentallo twice no matter how familiar he looks. Of course, three weeks doesn’t mean anything, and he could still do something, but there’s something about him that feels  _ better.  _

Just after Larry sets Rita down on the pavement of Danny the Street but before Danny makes their next jump, he turns to look at Flex.

“Keeg called Danny here, right?” He checks. “When you showed up?”

Flex nods.

“Thank you,” Larry says loudly, as a puff of steam in the shape of a heart floats by. Then, quieter, as he turns to face Flex fully, he says, “Thank you. For saving me.”

Larry can see Dolores kneeling beside Rita out of the corner of his eye for just a moment before it’s blocked out when Flex cups his face in his hand. It’s so stupidly big, Larry wants to laugh, but it catches in his throat when Flex carefully leans forward and presses their foreheads together.

“Of course,” he says. It’s really all he has to say, but of course he continues on. “I’m always going to try to be there to catch you.”

Larry squeezes his hand as tightly as he can while Keeg murmurs in his heart and he closes his eyes as he feels the ground shift slightly beneath him, Danny carrying them far away from the big white house on the hill overlooking Cloverton.

Yeah. He’s pretty sure he can live with that.

* * *

**_13 years later._ **

“This is the place?” Larry rolls his shoulders back, hand falling easily into Flex’s.

“Corpus Sanatorium,” Flex confirms. He brushes at some stray petals on the shoulder of Larry’s now-worn jacket. “Thanks, Danny. We’ll take it from here. Tell Dolores and Rita we’ll be back in time for dinner, okay?”

The sound of bells on the breeze fades out as they step off Danny the Street together, heading toward the large building at the end of the road. It looks unnatural and yet fits in with the landscaping perfectly. Like a genetically modified rose in a sea of natural ones. Or maybe it’s best not to compare this place to a rose. Roses are beautiful. The sanatorium is decidedly not.

Keeg warbles and turns over on hirself in Larry’s heart, and Flex laughs loudly into the crisp morning air. Larry rolls his eyes behind his goggles and bumps his shoulder into Flex’s. “You’re both a pair of comedy wizards,” he pretends to gripe. “Come on. Back in time for dinner, remember?”

Flex shrugs and the door opens for them on its own. Larry still remembers with stark clarity when Dolores had pulled him aside and whispered in his ear that that was a trick Flex  _ adored  _ using in an attempt to be chivalrous, and that she didn’t want him to call him out on it because it made him so happy. Larry would never have dreamed of ruining it, especially not after such a dire warning.

Keeg’s humming becomes more subdued as they step through the halls. Larry rubs his chest absently. Even after all these years, stuff like this still makes both of them nervous. There are too many memories trapped in winding hallways and darkened rooms and the smell of disinfectant and the clinical voices of people who care too little about the cost of progress.

“She might not be one of Niles’ people, you know,” Flex says quietly. Larry pretends not to notice he’s unlocking every door they pass. Most of these people will find a home on Danny that’s more loving than anything they could’ve received elsewhere within the next few hours.

Larry swallows. “I know. She’s still worth it.”

Flex nudges him gently and nods. “Everyone is.”

Flex continues on when they get to it. To the door. He always does when it’s someone they think could’ve come from Niles. That isn’t his burden to bear. That’s not the spiderweb he was trapped in. That’s for Rita and Larry to overcome themselves. Thinking about that reminds him that he hopes Rita’s been watering those plants he gave her.

She’s curled up at the back of the room, breathing heavily into her hands. There’s a hard glint in her eyes as she peers at Larry through her fingers.

Larry kneels, just far enough from her to be heard without seeming threatening. Hopefully, anyway. “Hey. Your name’s Jane, right?”

“I’m not Jane,” she hisses out through gritted teeth. “I’m not—I don’t—”

“Okay.” They talked about this when they’d talked about why Niles would have wanted her in the first place. He understands, some. Keeg understands more, and ze makes that fact known in his ventricles. Larry glances over his shoulder at the hallway. Some of the other patients have discovered their doors were unlatched. “Do you want to get the fuck out of here?”

Her hands drop, and for a moment she just blinks at him. He tilts his head and looks back. There are bruises around her wrist and on what little he can see of her neck. The blue-white of her eyes and the streak in her hair stand out under the bright white lights. Her wide smile stands out even more.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @augustheart on tumblr.


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